by John Osborne
Please let me kiss you.
“Noah, you’re awful!” Willow said and gave him a playful shove, which he returned. He grabbed her by the hand and jerked her in close, tight against him. He put his hand on the back of her neck, pulled her face close, and kissed her willing lips. Though not as magical as their first kiss and just for show, Noah still enjoyed the experience thoroughly, and was perhaps more passionate than intended. When they broke apart, Willow wore her sexy smile.
“My goodness,” she said, “that got my hormones pumping.”
When they reached Number 13, Noah put out the “Do Not Disturb” sign and locked the door. A glance at the office proved Tommy had taken it all in.
Noah set the wine down and checked his watch. “We need to get moving,” he said, all business again. Willow wandered to the desk and perused the mess of papers and photos covering it, while Noah rummaged through drawers and pulled out dark clothes. From the closet, he pulled dark blue tennis shoes.
“What happened here?” Willow asked. She was pointing at her wrinkled picture on the wall, her eyebrows arched with suspicion.
Well, it fell off the wall and I accidentally stepped on it.
“Uh, that happened yesterday. After we had our … disagreement.”
Willow smiled. “That’s okay. My image of you got crumpled for a while, too.”
Once changed, Noah started the movie, turned up the volume and shut off all the lights so the television glow illuminated the room. He retrieved his coat and put on his gloves. Willow pulled rubber gloves from her pocket, put them on and covered them with regular gloves. Last, they pulled on stocking caps.
A small window in the bathroom opened to the dark, backside of the motel. Noah opened it and popped the screen, then climbed out and dropped to the ground. Willow followed suit, except she winked out of sight before coming out the window.
Clear sky and a late-rising moon promised concealment. They walked along the edge of the fields and passed behind an abandoned factory building, and then turned east toward downtown. They waited for a break in the traffic on Route 1, ran across to McFerren Park and jumped the fence. Noah set a good pace across the park, angling north toward downtown, and they soon passed through the stone arch over the park entrance.
“Willow, where are you?” Noah whispered in no particular direction.
“Right here,” she whispered back. “I mean beside you on your right.”
Don’t look that direction, Noah.
He could just make out the patter of Willow’s little feet on the pavement.
“This blinking thing you do is weird,” Noah said.
“It’s winking, not blinking.”
“Right. How long can you stay … winked?”
“About half an hour. It takes a lot of energy, but I’ll be okay. We should be to Chester’s in ten minutes or so. Cut north one block and take the next alley east. We’ll go past the village hall and make sure his car is there.”
Noah worked at walking the right speed. He wanted to appear to be out for exercise, though most people out at night for exercise wore bright colors, not dark. In less than five minutes, they passed the village hall and Willow confirmed Jones’s car was in the parking lot. They walked one block south and turned east into the alley that passed behind Jones’s house. Three more blocks brought them to the back of Jones’s property, bordered along the alley by a six-foot high privacy fence with a locked gate.
Noah slipped into the shadow of the fence and stood with his back against it, glad that no streetlights illuminated the back of the house. He heard a zipper and some shuffling as Willow removed her jacket and, he presumed, tied it around her waist. A low buzz let him track her position as she floated over the fence and landed inside. The latch moved and the gate swung open.
Neat. Weird, but neat.
After he went through, the gate closed and latched itself. Soon an invisible little hand took his and pulled him toward the house.
“So far, so good,” Noah whispered. “How do we get in?” Willow didn’t answer for a moment.
“I’m going to reconnoiter,” she said and released his hand. “I’ll try the widow’s walk first. I doubt it’s locked, or has a lock, and you’d be surprised how many people don’t bother to lock their second floor windows.”
“Willow, please be careful.”
A rubber-gloved hand touched his cheek. “I will be.” Then she left, buzzing over his head.
Two minutes went by that felt like twenty as Noah visualized the many things that could go wrong. Finally, the back door opened and the storm door swung out a few inches.
“Come on!” Willow whispered. Excitement filled her voice and feelings, but Noah’s heart pounded like a jackhammer as he slipped in the door. Willow stood in front of him, barely visible in the dark house. She locked the door. “Follow me,” she whispered and took his hand. “And calm down, you’re making my heart race. I found his PC already. It’s in his bedroom on the second floor.”
“You move fast when you need to, don’t you?”
“I told you, I’ve done this before.”
“Why are we whispering?” Noah asked. “No one’s here.” Willow’s face glowed enough to illuminate a grin and a shrug.
The house smelled musty, a mix of basement dampness and taxidermy odors. Bizarre shapes and shadows of dead creatures covered the floors and walls, eerie in the streetlight coming through the front windows. Willow walked slowly, in deference to Noah, he assumed; she could see like a cat in the dark. They climbed the carpeted stairs and entered a room at the top. A streetlight starkly illuminated the bed, a chest of drawers and a computer desk. Willow released his hand and sat down before the computer. She found the port for the flash drive, hit a few keys, and chuckled.
“What a blooming idiot,” she said. “He has no security at all. Everyone’s careful about firewalls and stuff, but they don’t think about anyone breaking in. Ten minutes and I’ll be done.”
“I’ll snoop around,” Noah said.
He carefully moved about the second floor. Behind a closed door was a second bedroom decorated for a young girl, complete with a four-poster bed, feminine chest and dressing table. Aromas in the air reminded Noah of his niece’s bedroom. He played his keychain light across the top of the chest and lit little girl things: stuffed toys, a comb and brush, a pink boom box. At one end stood a framed picture of a young girl ten or eleven years old, a pretty shorthaired blonde. Willow hadn’t mentioned any girls in the Jones family. Noah opened the top dresser drawer and peered inside.
These things were never intended for a little girl.
Or perhaps they were.
He closed the drawer and moved on.
Inside the closet, Noah found a cedar chest against the back wall. He knelt, opened the lid with one hand, and aimed the light inside with the other. He cried out and dropped the lid. The bang echoed through the house.
“Noah? Are you alright?” Willow called.
“I’m okay. I dropped the lid on this chest. Go back to work.”
He lifted the lid again and peered inside.
Good. It’s not a body.
Now that he got a good look at it, he could see the legs folded at an awkward angle. The mouth was open and the lifeless eyes stared straight up. He poked a finger against the cold flesh and confirmed his suspicion: cyberskin, a material that imitated human flesh in weight and texture. Noah had seen it before when he had done a photo shoot on forestry department EMT’s and their training dummies. The nude body before him was anatomically correct in most details, a replica of a young blonde-haired girl.
Chester Jones, you are one sick son of a bitch.
Shaken at the evil, he closed the chest and left the room.
Noah passed a narrow staircase in the hallway that he presumed led up to the widow’s walk. The third bedroom was a makeshift library and storage room with bookcases along one wall and stacks of plastic tubs along the others. He shined his flashlight along the bookcases to find hunting books and magazines,
old detective novels and westerns. Most dealt with gory death or illicit sex. One shelf drew his attention: books about magic filled it, many of them very old. He pulled one out and found it to be a handwritten notebook, author unknown.
Time pressed on Noah’s mind. He returned the book to the shelf and retraced his steps to Jones’s bedroom, passing the bathroom without entering.
Some things a person doesn’t want to know.
Willow hunched over the laptop, squinting, intermittently tapping the keyboard. Noah rummaged through the chest of drawers, somewhat fearful of what he might find, but saw nothing of interest.
I can’t believe I’m in someone’s house, assisting with a crime.
He paced the small confines of the bedroom while Willow worked.
A clank and a whir sounded outside, toward the alley. Noah crossed the hall to the bathroom and looked out the window. A square of light grew on the alley as the garage door rolled up, activated by a remote.
He raced back to the bedroom. “Willow! He’s here!”
“Oops! The meeting must have been short. I’m almost done.”
You certainly seem relaxed, when we’re about to be caught!
Noah’s racing pulse quickened another thirty beats, he was sure. Tires crunched on gravel as a car turned into the garage. A few seconds later, the engine stopped and the garage door began to clank down.
“Willow, we’ve got to go!” She sat nodding and watching the screen for a few more seconds, hit some keys, pulled the flash drive from the port and sprang up.
“Done!”
The garage door ground into silence.
“We can’t go out the back door. What are we going to do?” Panic smothered Noah’s mind. Willow placed a hand on his chest, and rubbed it for a few seconds to calm him.
“We’re okay, Noah. Come here.” She walked to the window and opened it and the storm window. To his dismay, she disappeared. In a few seconds, he heard her buzzing outside the window. “Noah,” she said in a loud whisper, “sit sideways in the window with your knees up. I’ll take you down to the ground.”
“What? You’re crazy! You can’t hold me up. I weigh twice what you do, and it’s so high.” Noah’s stomach lurched.
“Alright. I’ll come visit you in jail … assuming he doesn’t just shoot you.”
“Crap!” Noah climbed into the window and sat sideways as instructed. The air wash increased as Willow approached. An arm slid under his shaking knees.
“Put your arms around my neck. Here, I’ll help you. Watch my wings.” Her invisible hand draped his right arm around her neck. He pulled himself close to her and buried his face against her neck, jamming his eyes shut. Her wings buzzed louder and he lifted off the windowsill. “I’ll have you down in a jiffy,” she said.
Just shoot me now.
They drifted a few feet away from the house, and then plummeted straight down like falling through the trap door of a gallows.
“Wheeee!” Willow whispered into his ear. She grunted from the load when her feet hit the ground, stood him up and then rocketed back to the open window, leaving him wobbling in the dark on unsteady legs.
A light appeared in the house, then another. Light shined into the bedroom where Willow struggled to close the window. He could hear her grunts but could see the window wasn’t moving.
Noah ran to the front of the house, stomped up the porch steps with as much noise as possible and pushed the doorbell button. “Trick or treat!” he yelled. He ran to the end of the porch, jumped across the bushes, and ducked around the house. In a few seconds, he stood below the stuck window. The front door opened and light flooded the front yard. The porch creaked under Jones’s feet.
The window came unstuck, and Willow buzzed down. Invisible hands grabbed Noah’s arm and pushed him flat against the house. She panted heavily, the clouds of her breath appearing without a visible source. Jones muttered and went into the house.
Noah let out a long sigh. “Gee, that was fun,” he whispered.
“I told you it would be.”
Noah crouched low and crept along the fence until they reached the alley, Willow’s light tread sounding behind him. He looked in every direction, stood and walked down the alley, hands in pockets, as if out for a pleasant stroll.
The return trip to the motel was uneventful. They climbed in through the bathroom window. Noah flipped on the light about the time Willow reappeared. Her cheeks were red from exertion and the cold. She hadn’t put on her jacket, and her wings drooped behind her.
You look whipped.
Noah touched her cheek. “Are you okay, sweetie?”
“Yeah, I’m alright,” she said with a tired smile.
“Go sit and rest while I change.” She nodded and left the bathroom. Noah pulled the door closed.
The movie was still running when Noah came out of the bathroom. Willow sat on the edge of the bed, engrossed in one of the sex scenes, with her back to Noah.
I shouldn’t. I really shouldn’t.
He crept up behind her.
“See anything you like?”
Willow jumped straight off the bed a foot in the air and then faced him, eyes blazing and wings popped up to flight position, twitching like he’d never seen.
“Doggone it, Noah!”
Noah took a deep bow.
“I am merely the instrument of karma,” he said. “Cosmic payback for the roller coaster ride at Jones’s.”
Willow’s eyes narrowed and her lips pursed tight. Noah braced himself for an electric jolt, but Willow let out a long breath instead. Her wings settled.
“I guess I deserved that.” She yawned and stepped toward him. “Thanks for everything you did tonight, Noah.” She smiled, placed her hands on his shoulders, and deftly threw him onto the bed. Noah landed on his back, and Willow scrambled on top of him and pinned both his wrists to the bed. Her face screwed up in an evil grimace and she spoke in her witchy voice.
“The wicked photographer should know better than to tease the poor little fairy when she’s tired.” She lowered her face to his, with her mouth open and her tongue hanging out. Noah tried in vain to escape.
“Willow, don’t you do it!”
Willow dropped her face to his and gave him a long, deep kiss. Noah recovered from his surprise and kissed her back. The kiss began playfully, but took on its own life. When they broke it off, their breathing was heavy, faces inches apart. Willow’s cheeks glowed.
Noah felt embarrassment but was unsure of the source. “If Tommy could see us now,” he said.
Willow giggled and rose from the bed. Noah stood, retrieved his ball cap and put it on, and then busied himself looking for his keys and avoiding looking at Willow. She untied her jacket from her waist and put it on, then stood before the mirror and straightened her hair, without looking at Noah.
That sure went where I didn’t expect.
Noah shut off the television and picked up the wine. Willow stood by the door waiting to leave.
“Do you drink wine?” he asked.
“Sure. Not often, but I like some every now and then.”
“I’ll take this with us. Maybe we can have a glass in celebration of a successful mission.” Willow nodded, smiling slightly. Noah slid the bottle inside his jacket where Tommy wouldn’t see it if he was watching. Without additional comment, they left the room and climbed into the truck.
Uncomfortable silence filled the air as they rode.
Why aren’t we talking?
Willow ended the quiet at that moment. “Noah, I’m sorry I kissed you like that.”
“You don’t need to apologize.”
“I know, but … you worry about touching and I was playing and then I was on top of you and … well, I shouldn’t have been so … forward. I don’t want to make you uncomfortable. Or make you think I’m uncomfortable.” Willow’s expression and feelings were confused and apprehensive.
“Sweetheart, did you notice I kissed you back? I like to kiss you. I grant you the situation turn
ed … embarrassing, but that happens sometimes when two people are still getting to know each other.” He patted her knee. “Everything’s fine. Except why do you always sit so far away?”
Willow smiled, unfastened her seat belt, and scooted close so her leg touched his.
“Better?”
“Yes.”
They turned off at the missing sign and bumped along the lane. Noah briefed Willow on what he had found in the other bedrooms. He told her about the girl’s room and the undergarments, but didn’t mention the doll in the chest. “I don’t think that room is intended for visiting nieces,” he said.
“No, it couldn’t be,” Willow said. “There aren’t any Jones relatives left. I don’t like to think who uses it.” Noah felt Willow’s leg grow tense.
“Let’s hope no one,” he said.
Willow led Noah slowly down the path to the cottage.
“You seem really tired, Willow,” he said.
“I am. I didn’t sleep at all last night.”
“You didn’t?”
“No. I had too much on my mind. After you left on Sunday, I had some things I had to sort out.”
“Like what?”
Willow hesitated. “Just … things.”
Secret things.
Shadow met them at the cottage door, happy to see them as always. They went in and shed their coats, hats, and shoes while the big dog flopped down by the woodstove. Willow walked to the stairs. “I’m getting out of these old tight jeans.” Instead of bounding up as usual, she pulled herself up with the banister.
“I’ll open the wine,” Noah said. He busied himself with finding glasses and a corkscrew. Willow returned while he was pouring out two glassfuls. She wore her white shorts and blue tube top. Her whole frame drooped.
They sat next to each other on the sofa and sipped their wine for a few minutes. Willow yawned more than once.
“When do you want to snoop Jones’s computer?” Noah asked.
“Better to wait until he’s not home, in case I hit a wrong key and make his laptop beep or something. We should wait until at least eight thirty tomorrow morning to be sure he’s left for his office.”
“I need to work tomorrow,” Noah said, “so I’ll come over about eight for some breakfast and then we’ll snoop. After that I’ll go take pictures until dark and then we can go over to the Big House and search the first floor.”
