by Lila Huff
“Which one got it right?” A heavily accented, French voice from my right asked.
It was the French woman who asked, but all eyes were on me. “I’m sorry?” I asked as I swallowed a piece of the scone.
“They both called you something different.” She said smiling slightly, “which one was correct?”
Oh, she wanted to know my name, “it’s Joellen, but I prefer Jo.” I had never been comfortable with talking to strangers, and European strangers were no exception.
I wasn’t able to take another bite before she asked, “and you’re from America?”
“Yeah, Oregon.” I didn’t know why she was so interested in me, but I wasn’t going to be rude.
“What brings you to London, and all alone?” her husband asked as he piled another portion of kipper onto his plate, amidst the crumbs of his scone.
“I’m just here on vacation; and I have some friends in London.” I desperately hoped that would be the end of it.
Thankfully it was. There was a commotion in the front room which thankfully drew their attention away from me. I finished off my scone quickly as they all got up to see what the hubbub was. I wrapped up a second scone and handful of grapes, and quickly escaped up the back stairwell to my room.
I was here to explore the city; I didn’t have time to waste with quibbles and questions. I looked at my watch. It was ten in the morning, which meant I had eight hours to enjoy the city before I had to be at the cocktail party.
But what to see first? I had a full week to explore, but I didn’t want to miss anything. I looked at the notebook that I had laid on top of my bag the night before. The page that faced me held a long list of the things I wanted to see: Big Ben, Westminster Abbey, the Tower of London… the list was two columns long.
I pulled my hair back into a long ponytail. There was no getting around the frizz that the day’s drizzle would incur, and as I left the room, I pushed my arms through the long sleeves of my charcoal-grey pea coat.
My first day in London flew by in a blur. I had been on the London Eye and seen Big Ben before lunch and loved every minute of the rainy English day, but I was very thankful that the small café I walked into for lunch was warm and dry. The girl behind the counter was melancholy as she took my order and handed me my soy latte.
I sat at a small table near the fireplace that crackled in the corner. It was nice to dry off from the damp air that pervaded through my thick layers. I sipped slowly on my coffee, letting the warm hazelnut liquid fight away the chill.
I began reading the paper – someone had left it on the seat next to mine – the front page held a story about the restoration of a bridge that I had never heard of, but what caught my eye was a story that took up the very small section in the bottom right corner of the front page.
Ghastly Murder in the East End
Dreadful Mutilation of a Woman.
During the early hours of yesterday morning a woman was brutally murdered in the most revolting and fiendish of manners. This is the third occurrence in this neighborhood and the character of the mutilation leaves very little doubt that the murderer has been the same in all three crimes.
These ghastly murders bear too close of a resemblance to those that took place in late eighteen-eighty-eight when Jack the Ripper stalked London. Could Jack be back?
The short snippet wasn’t much, there weren’t names or any other details that would have given me a clue as to how severe this murderer was, but the short article still sent a shiver up my spine, and I jumped when the melancholy waitress placed the plate of quiche down in front of me. She just looked at me as though I was crazy before returning to her magazine behind the cash register.
I needed to stop scaring myself. It was altogether too easy to do. The slightest noise in the dark and my imagination would whirl toward every possibility – usually negative. My mind would turn shadows into creatures from the depths of Hell that sought to drag me back with them to the fiery depths.
I focused on my quiche instead, quickly devouring it, before I finished off the last of my coffee. I looked up once or twice and saw the waitress eyeing me suspiciously. Was my behavior earlier that strange to her? Her behavior only meant that I wasn’t going to leave her as big of a tip as I normally would… granted, this was Europe, so I didn’t really know the tipping procedure here.
When I stepped out into the cold of the mid-day rain, I quickly opened my umbrella. The light patter of the raindrops on the thin fabric that served as my cover was quite soothing. I held my hand up to hail a taxi. That’s when my eyes locked with his. He was tall and dark. I would have guessed Greek. He stood in the shadow of an awning and the hair rose on the back of my neck. He had affixed me with a murderous gaze, but all of that was secondary. The first thing I noticed, the trait that caused my stomach to knot, was his eyes. They seemed to glow bright red in the shadow. There was no iris; no pupil. There was only the red.
He let out a feral snarl as the taxi pulled to a stop in front of me, blocking him from view. I climbed in hastily, and looked out the driver-side rear window. He was gone. Perhaps my imagination was giving me more lurid things to fret about.
I tried to put the thoughts away; the fears were harder to file away. I had almost calmed myself down by the time the driver pulled up in front of the bed and breakfast, but my fears flooded back when I turned to close the door and saw the same man across the street. His eyes were now hidden by dark sunglasses that were far from necessary under the gloom of the rainclouds.
I quickly hurried up the steps toward the closest thing to safety I had in this country.
“Are you back already?” Mrs. Peppery asked as I walked through the door.
“Yeah,” I said with a smile, trying not to sound as freaked out as I felt. “I’ve got plenty of time to explore the city.”
“Oh, yes.” Realization dawned across her face. “You have that cocktail party with the Bennett’s tonight.” The wrinkles of her face smoothed out as she smiled widely. “I do hope that you have fun.”
“I’m sure I will.” I smiled back as I hurried up the stairs.
My room was still locked and everything was still in its proper place, I went to the window to see if the man was still there. Moving the white curtains slightly I looked to where he had been. He was gone. The entire street was void of activity, other than one car that had just turned down the lane.
I shivered and tried once again to push the thoughts from my mind. I had to laugh, I was just being paranoid – as usual.
I put my hand up; hailing the black cab that was making its way down the lane. The taxis were definitely one of my favorite things about traveling in London.
Edith and Robert Bennett were family friends, I had only seen them on the few occasions they had visited my mother and father, but I had seen pictures of their fabulous flat and was more than excited to see it in person.
When the black taxi pulled up in front of the three story brick building, I almost worried that I had the wrong address. But the numbers next to the door were the same as the ones that Edith had given me earlier on the phone. I paid the driver and gave him what I considered to be a sizeable tip, but I wasn’t completely used to the exchange rate yet. I just assumed that I could halve everything and be pretty close to the cost in USD.
The windows on all three stories were lit and I could see faint shadows moving behind them. I walked up the concrete steps and knocked on the wooden door.
“Jo!” the petite blonde woman squealed as she quickly embraced me.
It had been a very long time since I had seen Edie and Bob, but they hadn’t changed a bit. Edie was still the tiny blond woman I could remember from back when I was five years old, and her husband, I could assume, was still the towering man he had been with his bushy mustache, though they were both beginning to grey around the temples.
“Hi, Edie,” I said as I hugged the small woman back. I had surpassed her height shortly after I had turned thirteen and she had always teased be about being
a giant, something that I found quite comical as I was only five feet and five inches tall.
Bob’s head was visible as it poked out from around the corner. “Glad to see you made it across the pond!” his voice was still the joyful booming voice I remembered. “Edie, introduce her to the rest of the gang.”
She took my coat and led me up the stairs to the main living portion of the house, where she introduced me to the five other guests that were already there. Mary and George were a middle aged couple that both had dark blonde hair that hid the beginnings of their greys quite well. Ingrid and Michael were a couple that were about my age, perhaps a few years older. She was ridiculously pregnant – I was worried they might have to call an ambulance for her at some point in the course of the evening – and he hung on her every word, ready to supply her with anything she could possibly want or need.
“And you remember Paul,” Edie said as she gestured to the only other solitary figure in the room.
Edith knew that I remembered Paul. It was a silly attempt to push us together again. Paul was Edith and Robert’s son. They had often conspired with my parents to attempt to get us together, but Paul and I never really seemed to click, so we had agreed to simply endure situations like these in the easiest manner possible, which generally meant that we would spend the entire night talking. It made the parents happy to think that their scheming had some chance of working.
“Of course, how are you Paul?” My smile was perhaps a bit too wide to be completely convincing.
“I’m doing well Ellie, how are you?” He was the only one who ever called me that, but his smile seemed sincere enough. He was better at acting like he thought of me as more than just a friend than I was. I noticed how quickly Edie pushed me toward him and retreated down the stairs.
“Good. London hasn’t been treating me poorly.” I noticed how very far away from the other two couples she had placed us. Edie was trying harder than usual, but it didn’t seem that Paul was fighting it as much as he usually did.
“I’m glad to hear that the rain hasn’t made you hate the country… or those who choose to live here,” he smiled as his sarcasm seeped through his words.
“I’ve never been averse to rain. You should know that.” I smiled at the thought. “But I hear you’ve just finished your studies at Oxford. That’s wonderful.”
“It is,” his eyes dropped to his drink. “I’m very glad to be done with it though, and I start at the museum next week.”
“That’s wonderful,” I repeated, and there was an awkward silence as I swirled the red wine around in the glass he had handed me. “Can you believe our parents are still doing this?” I asked with a smile. It was nice to joke about our parents antics. It was usually the only thing that got me through these awkward situations.
“Yeah,” he said absently. “Do you want to sit down?”
“Sure.” He wasn’t in as joking of a mood as usual. Perhaps his time at Oxford had stiffened him up. I was beginning to think that I was in for a long night.
We sat on the sofa in the middle of the room.
“How long until you’re due?” Mary was asking Ingrid.
“Oh, any day now.” Ingrid answered her with a shy smile.
“Do you think you’ll ever want to have kids?” Paul asked quietly.
I looked at him, surprised, and a bit amused by the question. “I don’t know. I don’t suppose I’ve ever really thought about it. I doubt that I’d be sad if I didn’t, but if I have them I’m sure that I’ll love them.”
He just looked at the floor sullenly. It wasn’t like Paul at all to be so dreary. The last time the family had visited we had had so much fun making a joke out of the whole thing. I guess that five years could change a lot. I didn’t think that our friendship would have been effected by the time though.
“How long have you two been together?” Ingrid asked us suddenly.
I stared at her for a moment, not understanding the major leap she had made and so I did not have time to answer her before Edie – who had made her way up the stairs with a new bottle of wine – was able to chime in.
“Oh, they’ve known each other since they were small children,” she said, a cheery tune to her voice. And then quietly – I suppose she thought I wouldn’t be able to hear her, or perhaps she wanted me to – she said, “we’re just waiting for the wedding announcement!”
I suddenly realized just how uncomfortable this evening was going to be. How had she made the leap that we would be getting married, and imposed that leap on a total stranger, when this was the first time that Paul and I had seen each other in five years? I was speechless, but with Edie around I didn’t need to speak, she told her guests whatever they wanted to know about me, sometimes she skewed the truth, sometimes it was a blatant fallacy.
I went through the rest of the evening in a bit of a daze. I wasn’t sure if I was more shocked or mad about the things that had happened. It wasn’t like Edie hadn’t done something similar to this before, but she was planning out my wedding with her dinner guests; a wedding that was never going to take place.
I was more than happy when the old grandfather clock in the hallway struck the ten o’clock hour. It was as though the soft chime brought me forth from my incoherent state.
“Well, I’m sorry to say that I have to be going,” I said as politely as possible. My exterior may have been composed, but inside I was beginning to fume about Edie’s presumptions. It was as though I had been on Novocain for the past several hours and its effects were just wearing off. But instead of pain, all that was coursing through my veins was a mixture of sheer embarrassment and anger. I highly doubted that I would ever find a good enough reason to enter this house again.
As far as I was concerned, Paul was as much at fault as his mother, he could have clarified the facts at any time without fault, whereas I would have been rude to contradict my host. I was more than ready to leave. These had been the worst four hours of my life.
“Dear, you can stay here tonight if you’d like?” She smiled at me without a trace of guilt on her face. She didn’t seem to feel that she had done anything wrong. “I can make up the spare bedroom for you.”
“No, that’s quite alright. Mrs. Peppery will be upset if I don’t make it back tonight.” I wasn’t sure that Mrs. Peppery would find it at all odd if I wasn’t there, but I was certain that I would not stay in this house another ten minutes. “It was nice meeting you all,” I said to the two couples in the room.
“Alright then, if you insist,” she said, sounding defeated. “Paul, dear, walk her out and make sure that she gets a cab.”
I was already halfway down the stairs, making my escape. “Good Night, and thank you for dinner.”
I heard the faint murmurs from upstairs as I found my way down the stairs. “Are American’s always that rude?” one of the men asked. “She barely said two words all night.”
“Can you blame her? No one can get a word in edge-wise when Edie gets going. Paul didn’t say much either.” One of the women responded.
I didn’t care if they thought I was rude. I only wanted to be out of this house. I felt about ready to explode I was so upset. Paul followed me down the stairs and helped me into my jacket.
“I’m sorry.” He said quietly. “She’s gone a bit overboard tonight. If I’d had any idea….”
“A bit?” I hissed viciously. “A bit, would have been stopping at the suggestion of a wedding, not picking out colors and invitation wording.”
He lowered his eyes to the floor, “I am sorry.” He looked at me, hope welling in his eyes. “Let me make it up to you. I’ll be your tour guide for the rest of your stay here, let me buy you an enjoyable dinner while you’re here.”
I sighed and rubbed the outer corners of my eyes with my thumb and index finger. “I’m about ready to do something drastic, so I don’t think that it would be okay for me to answer that right now.”
“Let me at least call you a cab.” His voice sounded pleading now.
; “No. I need to walk some of this..” I searched for the right word, but settled for a less severe one, “this anger off.”
“Ellie, it’s freezing outside.” He glanced down. “and you’re not exactly wearing sneakers.”
I looked at him icily and turned to open the door, but his hand was on it, keeping it shut. “Paul. I don’t want to make a scene in front of your guests – even if they already think I’m a rude American – please don’t make me.”
His hand moved away and I didn’t look back at him as I walked down the steps. I could tell that he was looking after me, but I refused to turn around. I honestly had no idea where I was going, but I didn’t care. I was walking to get rid of the anger that I had just had to stifle for four hours; it welled up within me in a cascade of salty tears.
I had been walking for the better part of fifteen minutes before I turned around. It was just a glance over my shoulder, but I saw the distinct outline of a man in the lamplight behind me. Paul no doubt, following me. I wasn’t exactly sure why, but that flared my anger, perhaps it was his disobedience. I had told him to stay. Or maybe it was because I was embarrassed by my anger. I didn’t know, but I kept walking haughtily down the sidewalk. I wanted to hit something. Why couldn’t he and his meddling mother just leave well enough alone? I looked behind me again, furious that he had followed me.
He was closer now, and I saw that it wasn’t Paul. Something heavy sunk in the pit of my stomach. The shadowed figure was much too large to be Paul. He stepped out from under the light and as the darkness enveloped him I saw the dull gleam of red eyes.
How could it be that the man from earlier had found me again? I quickened my pace. But when I turned again he was still gaining on me. I noticed then the sheer darkness that lay behind him and the light he walked under now went out as he passed it.
I shivered – a reaction to the combination of the cold night and the feeling of being completely alone – my pea coat seemed too thin. I turned again and he was closer still. I felt like a small lamb that was being hunted by a bobcat.
