Nikki's Secret

by William Malmborg

  Kimberly had just finished her shower, her body clad in fresh t-shirt and pajama bottoms, when someone pounded on the front door.

  Startled, she headed to the front room, a warning about simply opening the door echoing through her mind given the time of night.

  “Who is it?” she called out.

  Nothing.

  The pounding did not recommence, which was odd.

  Hesitation hit.

  Did someone realize at the last second that they had the wrong house?

  A few days earlier this had happened, not with her, but with the writer upstairs, a pizza delivery guy having gone up there to knock on the door rather than down to the basement. Kimberly knew about it because her windows had been open, the air temp outside being just low enough that it made more sense to cool the place down that way than with the air conditioning.

  She decided to peek out the window and see if a pizza delivery car was parked on the street. Rather than looking out at the street, however, her attention was snagged by the corner of something that had been stuck to one of the door windows.

  Pulling the curtain further from the window revealed an envelope that had been taped to the glass.

  An unexpected chill followed.

  Why would someone put an envelope on the window at this time of night?

  No answer arrived.

  What’s in the envelope?

  Kimberly didn’t really want to open the door, not when someone could easily be waiting behind one of the bushes, but the urge to see what was inside was too great and couldn’t be denied. She also knew if she moved quickly enough she could open the door, reach up, grab the envelope and shut the door again without giving anyone time enough to even think about charging up the steps.

  Do it.

  She took a deep breath first. Less than ten seconds later the door was slamming shut; the envelope safely in her hands.

  Nothing was written on it, but something was certainly inside.

  She twisted the lock back in place and then opened the envelope.

  Several pictures were within, pictures of her taken during the last few days: some of her working, some of her simply running errands. On the back of each the word WHORE or SLUT was written in big bold letters. Seeing this she couldn’t help but let out a scream.

  An odd sound followed. It was coming from the inner stairway that separated her apartment from the apartment upstairs. A knock on the door leading to the stairway echoed along with the words, “Are you okay?”

  Kimberly realized it was the writer from above.

  Without really thinking, just knowing she suddenly didn’t want to be alone, she unlocked the stairway door and opened it. A second later the writer was standing in her front room, the question about her being okay leaving his lips again.

  10

  “At the very least they could make a report and use it as evidence if stuff like this continues,” Bill said.

  “Do you think it will?” Kimberly asked.

  The two were sitting across from each other in the family room, him on a leather chair, her on the couch. On a box in front of the couch sat the pictures. According to Kimberly the box was just there until she could find a decently priced coffee table. The fact that she had felt the need to share this with him after he had looked at it while sitting down despite the circumstances was a good sign. It meant she wasn’t completely scared out of her mind. Fear was present, however. That could not be denied.

  “I don’t know,” Bill said. He thought carefully on what to say because he didn’t want to add terror to the situation, but also didn’t want to lead her to a false sense of security. “I’ve never really dealt with anything like this before, but it seems to me if someone went far enough to take pictures of you, and then write things like ‘whore’ and ‘slut’ on the back of each then this probably isn’t going to be the end of it.”

  She didn’t reply right away.

  The silence made Bill uncomfortable.

  “I guess you’re probably -- ” she started and then yelped as something behind him caught her attention.

  Bill twisted around and saw Toby’s head peeking around the stairway door. “Toby, what’re you doing down here?” he asked.

  Toby stepped into the room, eyes darting back and forth.

  “You don’t mind cats, do you?” Bill asked.

  “No, I love cats,” she said with a weak smile. An odd sense of sadness followed the statement, but faded quickly.

  Bill turned back to Toby and said, “Come on buddy, don’t be shy. This is Kim.”

  Toby didn’t allow the encouragement to dispel his cautiousness and continued to move toward them at a slow, careful pace.

  “Don’t tell the landlord, but I used to let him down here when the place was empty just to explore a bit. He’s not used to seeing furniture and stuff.”

  “I won’t,” she said. “Wait, do you have a key?”

  “What?”

  “For the stairway door.”

  “Oh, no. It was unlocked when no one was here so I could check it every now and then and make sure things were okay.”

  Kimberly nodded.

  At the same moment Toby jumped up on the couch next to her and sniffed her leg. She looked down at him with surprise.

  “So, do you want me to go get the number for the police department? I have it on my phone upstairs. I don’t think this is a nine one one situation.”

  “Jeez, I don’t really know,” Kimberly said while reaching a hand to pet Toby. “Do you really think it’s necessary?”

  “Honestly, I think it’s in your best interest just so there is a report on file.”

  “Kind of like going to the doctor after a car accident even if you feel okay,” she said.

  Bill thought about that for a second and then nodded, “Yeah, exactly.”

  Without warning Toby stepped up onto Kimberly’s lap and laid down on her leg, the sound of his purrs loud enough to reach Bill’s ears.

  “Awww,” she said.

  “He’s very people friendly,” Bill said. “Aren’t you Toby?”

  In reply, Toby rubbed the side of his face against Kimberly’s knee.

  “He was born on my parent’s front porch. Took me like six months to tame him. It was funny because we had a blizzard one day and he was out on the porch shivering in the corner so I just opened the door and left it open and he slowly came inside into the warm air and never left.”

  “Wow,” Kimberly said. “He seems so sweet.”

  “He is. Hey, let me run up and get that number for you.”

  “Okay.”

  Toby lifted his head from the lap as Bill stood up and started for the stairs. “It’s okay buddy, I’ll be back,” he said. With that he went up to his apartment, looked around for a moment, found his phone sitting on his side table, and returned to the first floor. “Here’s the number. You can use my phone if you want.”

  “What do I tell them?” she asked.

  “Um, that someone is harassing you and that they actually came to the house and made a physical presence.” He shrugged. “Seems fitting.”

  She looked at the phone while still petting Toby with her free hand and said, “I don’t know why but I’m nervous.”

  “I know. I was the same way a few months ago when the phone line fell off the side of the house and was on the street. Don’t worry though; they’re very nice out here.”

  He thought back to that moment and remembered wondering whether or not the police were somehow aware of his online activities and if calling them would lead to them realizing he was wanted for something -- maybe like accidentally visiting an illegal porn site or for creating a fake web presence. Of course nothing like that had happened, but the fact that the fear had been present had startled him.

  “Yes, hello,” Kimberly said into the phone. “Um, I’m calling to report that someone is harassing me.” She listened. “No, they actually came to the house and left pictures of me on the front door.” She listened some more. “
Oh . . .” she looked up at the ceiling for a moment and then rattled off the house address, listened for a moment, and then nodded. “Okay, thanks.” With that she closed the phone.

  “Someone on their way?” Bill asked while taking the phone back.

  “Yeah.”

  “Good. They’ll be here pretty quickly too unless they have a dozen calls or something. The station is like a mile that way.” He pointed to the north. “Next to the library actually.”

  12

  “How’re your friends doing?” his mother asked as Mark stepped inside the house around ten thirty.

  “They’re good,” he lied, her presence in the kitchen surprising him since she had to be out the door at eight fifteen in the morning for work.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing,” he said with a shake of the head. “Just tired. I forgot how long of a drive that is and how crazy people get on ninety.”

  “You weren’t drinking, were you?”

  “No, of course not.”

  “It’s okay if you were, just remember not to drive home if you’ve had any even if it means you need to call a cab and then have us run you out in the morning to get your car,” she said. “Your father and I would rather have you -- ”

  “Mom, I know. I wasn’t drinking, and if I had been I wouldn’t have been driving. Honestly, I’m just tired.”

  She looked at him for several seconds and then nodded. “Okay. Well . . . good night then.”

  “Good night,” he replied and started toward his bedroom. He made it halfway there before turning around and going back into the kitchen to get a soda, his mind not caring about the caffeine because chances were he wouldn’t get any sleep that night. Not when his thoughts were so focused on Nikki and the torment she had caused him.

  13

  “So at no point today did you notice anyone following you or maybe just consistently being around you,” the officer asked. She seemed a nice lady and quickly put to rest the fear Kimberly had of this situation not being serious enough to warrant a call to the police.

  “No,” Kimberly said after trying really hard to picture someone. “Maybe if I had been paying attention and looking for someone I would have noticed, but I never even considered someone could be following me.”

  “And nothing like this has happened before?”

  She shook her head.

  “Okay,” the officer said. She took a moment to read over her notes and then looked up at Bill. “You said you saw someone running through the backyard. Any more details about them come to light in the last few minutes?”

  “Not really,” Bill said. “I did see someone earlier, though, at the front door. It completely slipped my mind. It was a young guy with flowers who asked me if you’d be home soon.” He nodded toward Kimberly during the last part of this statement.

  “He actually wasn’t looking for me,” Kimberly said before the officer could ask for more details on that. “He thought someone named Nikki lived here and -- ”

  “Nikki?” Bill blurted.

  Both turned toward him.

  “Yeah, Nikki,” Kimberly said. “I figured she must’ve lived here at some point before me because I also got some mail for her a while back. I was going to ask the landlord about that tomorrow.”

  The officer considered this for a moment while looking at Bill and asked, “Did the name spark something?”

  “No,” Bill said. “Nothing. I just, well, I didn’t realize the guy had the wrong person. He never told me a name.”

  Kimberly stared at Bill, who then looked back at her for a second and then looked down at his feet. He’s lying, Kimberly said to herself. And he knows I know he’s lying. She wasn’t so sure about this last part, but the way he looked away from her made it seem likely.

  “Is there any reason to think this guy with the flowers -- did he give you a name?” the officer asked.

  “Yeah, um . . . Mark?” Kimberly said. She thought about the name and added, “Yeah, I’m pretty sure it was Mark.”

  “Last name?”

  “No, sorry.”

  “It’s okay. Any reason to suspect he may have had anything to do with the pictures?”

  “I really don’t know.” Kimberly pictured the moment when Mark had realized she wasn’t Nikki and how the flowers had slowly lowered until they pointed toward the ground. “He seemed pretty . . . I don’t know, confused by the whole thing.”

  The officer wrote this down.

  Kimberly looked at Bill again, and again he looked away.

  Silence settled.

  “Anything else you think might have bearing on this?” the officer asked after nearly a minute. She was looking at Kimberly.

  “No,” Kimberly said.

  The officer turned to Bill. “Anything?”

  He shook his head.

  “Okay. As it stands now I’m going to file a report and bring those pictures in. A case is going to be opened on this, but I will tell you there probably isn’t anything the investigator can do at this point. However, if anything else happens you make sure to call and an officer will be out here to make a report and gather any evidence that is left. Every incident, if more occur, will be filed with this one and if the person harassing you is eventually identified we will have a pretty good case built up.”

  Kimberly nodded. She had known there probably wasn’t anything they could do about it, but even so hearing it now from the officer felt like a let down. It also was a bit disconcerting to know that the person would have to do more in order to be caught, kind of like those crimes shows were the detectives were forced to wait for a serial killer to strike again because they simply didn’t have enough evidence to get anywhere.

  “And if you see anything out of the ordinary please call as well,” she said to Bill. “Is it just the two of you or is there a third apartment?”

  “There’s a basement apartment too, but the guy that lives down there is rarely home,” Bill said. “He travels for business I believe.”

  “Okay, well, if you get a chance to speak with him let him know about all this.”

  Bill nodded. “I will.”

  “Very good,” the officer said. Less than a minute later she was gone.

  Kimberly turned to Bill. “So?” she asked.

  “What?” Bill asked.

  “Who’s Nikki?”

  “I don’t really -- ”

  “Yes you do,” she insisted before he could finish the denial, arms crossed.

  He didn’t reply.

  “Who is she?” Kimberly asked again.

  Bill sighed. “She’s nobody.”

  “What?”

  “I made her up. It’s just a name I wrote under for a while to make extra money before my real novels started to pay the bills.”

  “What? Like a pen name?”

  “Yeah, and that’s why the name caught me off guard. There’s no way it could have anything to do with this though, and given the popularity the books under my name are starting to achieve I would really prefer that the connection between those books, which don’t even exist anymore, and myself, isn’t revealed.”

  A realization dawned on her. “Those books weren’t horror, were they?”

  “No,” Bill said. “And like I said there is absolutely no way anyone could make a connection between them and this place.”

  “But then how do you explain someone asking for Nikki, and the mail I got?” Kimberly asked.

  Bill thought about this for a while and said, “Maybe someone named Nikki did live here before the Roberts. Actually, that might be why the name appeared in my mind when I was thinking of one to use, because I may have heard the name at some point and it stuck in my head.”

  “Oh,” Kimberly said. She thought about this for nearly a minute and realized it made sense. Besides, why would someone show up with flowers unless they had actually made plans to see that person, something that couldn’t possibly have happened without Bill knowing about it? “I suppose you’re right.”

  �
��Thanks. I think I’m going to call it a night. Do you need anything before I head up?”

  She shook her head. “Did Toby go back up?”

  “Yeah, the knock on the door spooked him.”

  “Oh yeah.” Kimberly remembered seeing him flying toward the stairs.

  “Well, good night,” Bill said. He waited for her reply and then started up the stairs and closed his door.

  Kimberly did the same with her door and then quickly double checked to make sure the front door was locked. After that came the kitchen door, followed by the windows. Everything seemed secure. Sadly she didn’t feel safe.

  14

  Tales of a Sex Crazed College Student. The carefully designed title stood against an erotic backdrop that displayed a naughty looking schoolgirl kneeling provocatively before a laptop on the floor, the letters arching over her so as not to mar the focus of the image. The image itself was a real photo rather than something an artist had created, yet even so, it was evident to Mark that quite a bit of thought had gone into it in order to maximize the seductive power it would have on guys like him. It wasn’t until he had started to notice certain trends in the timing of Nikki’s emails on the Adult Friend Finder site last spring, however, when he began to suspect a lack of genuineness to the girl and her blog. The question was would a company like Adult Friend Finder really create a completely different web page that was updated constantly just to steer visitors to the main Adult Friend Finder dating site? For some reason his mind had always leaned toward an answer of no when contemplating this. Using staff to pose as girls on the main site who would email guys shortly before their monthly membership was set to expire so they would renew was one thing, but creating an entirely new site that had no income potential itself and had to be maintained seemed too much -- especially considering the size of the Adult Friend Finder enterprise. A blog like Nikki’s, even if it directed half its new daily visitors to the Adult Friend Finder site, would be like the equivalent of adding coins to a millionaire’s bank account. It just didn’t seem worth their time. Plus the link to Nikki’s Adult Friend Finder profile, which was promptly displayed on the upper right corner of the blog, wasn’t the only link to an adult site. Almost daily (until the site had stopped being updated) new video trailers for different porn sites would appear beneath the profile badge. Book cover images were there as well, most belonging to the erotic category, but some just to the standard genres of horror, mystery and fantasy. One author in particular -- William something -- had always had a book cover image displayed on the blog, and while Mark didn’t know for sure, he often had wondered if authors (and the porn sites) had paid for those ads. If so, then the traffic to the William guy’s book must have been pretty good given the consistency of his covers appearing on the site.