The Woman Hidden

by Lucas Mattias

  “And what should I do about Georgia?”

  “Does she hurt you, too?”

  He exhaled strongly, finishing his second glass of whiskey.

  “I’m losing myself at work. I’m losing my job. This is her fault.”

  “Anthon.” Mike sighed and leaned against the counter, approaching Anthon though his eyes were on the TV. “Maybe it’s time you started accepting the fault is only yours.”

  “She distracts me.”

  “Because you allow that.”

  “I’m stuck in unresolved cases and a failed marriage, which is ironic, since I have a billion-dollar wife.”

  “Because you allow that.”

  “I don’t allow life to happen, Mike, it does.”

  “You allow those things to settle, bud.”

  “My life is fucked, not settled.”

  Mike laughed out loud and not because of the match. The game was crap, so boring Anthon could barely understand the man’s obsession with it.

  “You do nothing to change, Anthon. Is your marriage failing? Go to the Bahamas with the lady. Your job sucks? Shake things up, use a change of air.”

  “Maybe I should. They want me to go to Derby, to assist on an investigation. An investigation that must have frozen already by now.”

  “Then, go. Changing is good. But stop being a pampered complainer ass.”

  “Mike,” Anthon raised his glass, as if toasting to the moment. “You always have the right words.”

  He tried to indicate he wanted a refill, but before he could stretch his arm to reach Mike, he felt the strong twinge in his chest. Not a mild one that could be explained by gases or ordinary heartburn. A severe twinge, followed by a blurred and distorted vision.

  Anthon suddenly seemed not to be sitting at a bar but floating in a vacuum. He felt his body numb and frozen. Mike realized something was wrong, but he did not move, he could not. Anthon lost control of his body, which then decided to squirm in severe spasms in an aggressive convulsion, and he lost consciousness long before he felt the thud of his very own body against the wooden floor of the establishment.

  IV

  The parking lot was oddly empty, probably due to the warnings about the risks of a snowstorm coming soon. Jason parked his car in front of the grocery store and jumped out, trying to ignore the relentless headache and the way the brightness of the day bothered him. He took a deep breath as he slammed the door and tried to make his way to the store, feeling a slight vertigo and racing heart as he did it. Up to the previous day he had been well and now, out of nowhere, he felt as in a heavy hangover when he hadn’t even drunk.

  The doorbell announced his arrival as he opened the door. It was empty inside too, except from Marge, the usual cashier who already knew him as well as any other person in his life. He gently nodded at her, ignoring what seemed to be a long burning now, and believed to have heard the woman say something, but he ignored it and only worried about getting a basket for his brief shopping.

  The aisles seemed to narrow, the shelves seemed too distant at the same time, making it even harder for him to keep his focus as he tried to find what he needed.

  The thought of seeing Michelle was still in his head. He knew himself well enough to know he had no problems that could justify that. He also knew himself enough to know he didn’t believe in ghosts, but the sight had been so real, so vivid he barely knew what to believe. Maybe that triggered his anxiety, a kind of anxiety he hadn’t experienced before and that was the reason he felt accelerated, both in his head and heart. He remembered when, as a teenager, he suffered from bouts of anxiety and one of the symptoms was a tingling, the same he now felt in his arms. Yes, it was sheer anxiety and nothing more. A blurred sight, it may not even have been Michelle…

  He needed cereals. Marco was an eating monster and now they had Clarice at home, which meant he needed double of it, at least. Although Jason could see the cereals boxes right at his face, he couldn’t discern the Froot Loops from the Cheerios. And he didn’t even know Clarice’s favorites.

  “Jason.”

  The whisper came right at the back of his head, causing a cold shiver to run down his spine that lifted the hair on the way.

  The voice was real.

  He turned sharply, but there was no one. Some lounge music played in the store while Marge, at the counter, absently-minded watched the small TV on the opposite wall, hanging between the cigarette packs and the candy exposed around it.

  There was no one else.

  Jason inhaled deeply, trying to keep his sight from blurring, and turned back to the boxes of cereal. Maybe he should take the multi-grains option as it was a healthier choice than the cluster of sugar and carbohydrates he had. Perhaps…

  Was that a spider?

  He believed, at least, to have seen one on one of those cereal boxes. A tiny spider, bearing resemblance to a black widow, fast and with long legs. He blinked and looked at it again, but it was gone. No. There were no spiders.

  Michelle had always hated spiders and her phobia had transferred to him, as if by osmosis. Despite knowing there would be no spiders in that immaculate store, he nervously shook his left as his brain assimilated the tingling from the arachnids. Nothing.

  Jason dropped the chosen box in his shopping basket, he needed dairy and, of course, complements to his meals. He knew that, by the end of that aisle, he would find his desired food in refrigerators and freezers, he just had to turn around and move on.

  The music on the background changed, now playing some Brazilian song or something from Latin-American origins, at least he thought he knew that melody, even risking humming parts of it, surprising himself as he realized he knew the song, indeed, although he didn’t fully comprehend the lyrics.

  He wondered if there was anything else he needed in the cereal section and turned around.

  And there she was.

  Alive, her hazel eyes wide open and fixed on him, her lifeless and colorless lips, her dark skin brittle and opaque. Her hair looked as if wet and what seemed to be blood ran down on her face, coming from her scalp… she was exactly like in the day she died.

  “Jason.”

  Now he was sure. Michelle was there. In a sudden frightened move, Jason jumped backwards, hitting his basket against the Froot Loops shelf. Some boxes fell and the noise echoed through the empty grocery store.

  “I… I don’t…”

  “Mr. Flyce?” Marge called from somewhere far behind him.

  Jason turned around by reflex and saw Marge, leaning against her check-out counter, trying to find him amidst the mess of fallen goods. Turning back to Michelle, she wasn’t there anymore. Where was she? Where had she gone?

  It was not real. He repeated it to himself a few times. It could not be real.

  Maybe it was. Maybe Michelle had been alive all along, trying now to play with his sanity. Jason walked down the grocery aisle, trying to find traces of hers, ignoring the dropped boxes he left behind unattended.

  He saw, then, something moving on the parallel corridor through the oat boxes. He stopped and observed. Yes, someone was moving on the other side. He looked for other indications and, through the security mirror placed on the end corner of the supermarket, he saw there was no one. However, as he turned his attention to the gaps between the oat boxes, he got to see someone moving on the other side again.

  Jason stepped closer to the shelves at gentle steps, this time leaving the basket aside and ignoring the throbbing headache, trying to capture another movement from the neighboring corridor.

  He brought his head closer to the cartons and once his hand was free from the basket, he tried to push the ones at front out from his sight, he didn’t even need oats. While spreading the boxes trying to capture any information with his eyes, he saw something run through the shelf and jump on his hand. Jason pulled away, keeping the hand steady and when got far enough, he saw and felt the little legs touching his skin.

  Spider. The same he had seen before. It was still, almost frozen,
just waiting for the right moment to attack. Jason could already feel his heart beat faster along his faltering breath, but before he could shake his hand and get away from the small arachnid, he noticed it wasn’t alone.

  Gradually, the spiders came up, from behind the boxes, from over the shelves, underneath and all around. They were countless, there were thousands of it, a horde of arthropods invading the small market and engulfing the hand he now could barely move. His breathing became louder, shorter, and when he suddenly pulled his hand from the shelf, he lost his own balance and saw himself fall against the rack on his backs, causing the complete destruction of the grain section.

  The spiders kept on coming towards him and, as if it hadn’t been enough, the grains had spread throughout the floor, revealing other little monsters that had also decided to come alive. Small dark venomous centipedes crawled on his skin, climbing his arms and neck. Jason was suffocating, unable to run or scream. The spiders and centipedes advanced against him and in the same moment a specific hissing sound drew his attention.

  As he turned his head, Jason saw the snake. Not any snake, an albino serpent, long and thick that stared at him coldly, ready to strike, hissing while observing frozen Jason. And the snake was not alone. Other ones crawled on the store’s wooden floors, calm and slowly reaching for him, waiting for the right moment to act upon it.

  He wanted to scream. He wanted to stand up, but he was surrounded by the animals, covered by them, about to die.

  And he saw her again. Michelle’s sight came along the sound of bells, as if they indicated him she had just entered the room.

  “Jason.”

  “Michelle… take me out from here. Help me. Help me!”

  He could feel his eyes wet and warm the same way he felt his panting while his voice came out desperate and guttural.

  “Jason?”

  A second voice called for him, calling his name, though he was too lost to answer. He needed her answer, he needed the support from his Michelle to get away from all of that.

  “You are useless, Jason. Cannot even get yourself free from such tiny spiders. Do you remember how much I hated spiders?”

  Her voice was still the same and, although chastening him, she bore the same sweetness and peacefulness she’d always had with her. The same melodic and sweet tone of voice, matching the sound still playing in the background.

  “Jason?” The other voice called, distant and muffled as if under water.

  “Michelle. Help me. I’m dying, Michelle.”

  “I died, Jason.”

  And then her faced changed completely, now engulfed in wrath. Once peaceful, now the cuts started to appear, a part of her forehead sank in a sudden thud at the same moment that one of her eyes seemed to implode, squirting a mix of blood and a thick dark liquid against Jason’s face.

  He yelled, desperately. He no longer wanted to witness that, he desired no monsters, he wished for her no more.

  Michelle kept on transforming herself. Her hair, once seen in flawless curls, was drenched in blood, in a filthy mess of dirt and human remains. Another part of her face crumbled. Michelle raised her hands below her chin and waited as her teeth, one by one, fell over her palms, covered in blood and an also dark, rotten liquid.

  She had died and she died that way.

  Jason was already drowning in his own tears and desperate screaming when the bells tolled again and it all dissipated into the air.

  There was no Michelle anymore, not spiders or snakes. He was alone, fallen onto a metallic rack, among broken jars, shattered glass and a sea of smashed grains, many of which he didn’t even know.

  He tried to catch his breath and sat on the floor, trying to make some sense out of what he had just seen. His heart was still racy and, by using both his hands, he tried to clean his face, denying all that had happened.

  “It can’t be possible, I’m not okay. I didn’t…”

  “Jason?”

  The voice was the Sheriff’s, who had just entered the aisle.

  Although it was indeed his voice, it was not him.

  Jason raised his head to reply to the man and he saw his languid and slender figure, his hands on his knees while gazing Jason. Nevertheless, it wasn’t the sheriff. The clothes were the same, the voice was the same, the hat was the same.

  But not his face. Instead of his fragile and shriveled smile, a mouth slit from ear to ear smiled at him, showing sharp and bloodied teeth protecting a bifurcated tongue that danced in his mouth just like a confused snake. His eyes were burning coal in the darkness of night, sparking as Jason fought to keep eye contact. The skin was wrinkled, almost scaly, like a smoldering snake covered by dust and tar.

  The hands had given way to long pointed claws, which matched the horns, long and sinuous, like a deer’s, whose tortuous ends rose in irregular, cracked spirals, dark as the moonless night.

  It was a demon. The same demon that had taken Michelle.

  Jason dragged himself away from the devil-man, trying to find Michelle’s comfort. His wide eyes tried to find a way out, but the small animals and the snakes were returning slowly, keeping themselves at a safe distance around the Sheriff.

  “Jason?”

  “Michelle!” He yelled, hoping she would come up once more to save him.

  She would not come back. She had no reasons to. She was dead and he… the fault was all his. Entirely his.

  The demon-Sheriff bluntly moved towards him and Jason didn’t notice when his clenched fist flew on the monster’s way, missing it for inches. That was enough for the demon to grab him by the wrist. His hand burned against Jason’s arm, exuding an unmistakable odor of charred skin and hair, he could even hear the popping of the blisters on his skin.

  An icy ring, then, touched his wrist, closing itself around it. The demon was chaining him to a grate, it was ready to kill him, Jason knew it. Before he could try and attack that demon back or yell even louder for help or Michelle’s rescue, the smoldering demon’s hand came against his face and the smack that came from it echoed on the walls of the grocery store and proved itself sufficient for making him lose his conscience for a few seconds. Long seconds.

  “Jason?”

  He opened his eyes and saw the Sheriff watching him, the face torn between scare and concerns.

  “Aubry,” Jason replied, stuttering. His voice was weak and, although not in panic anymore, he could feel the dried tears on his face.

  Around him, a mess of broken glass, squashed grains and fallen shelves. The sheriff, kneeling next to him, kept on watching him while Marge, from the counter, seemed extremely disturbed.

  “Is everything alright, Flyce?”

  Jason honestly couldn’t tell. He tried to raise his head and his body, but it all seemed to heavy and his hand was still cuffed to one of the shelves.

  Where was the demon? Michelle? His arm bore no signs of burns and there was not even a single a moved grain on the ground to indicated the presence of snakes or spiders. Jason sat down and tried to take deep breaths, thrice, three long deep diaphragmatic inhales as he used to do when in one of his anxiety fits.

  Nonsense. That had nothing to do with anxiety; he was just not willing to believe in ghosts, however.

  “You’re not sinking into drinking again, are you?”

  As in a flash, Jason saw himself at the grocery parking lot, leaning against the sheriff’s old truck. He didn’t recall having arrived there, let alone his holding a wet towel against a painful cut on his left forearm. The glass and the shelves. Oh, Marge! The woman should be gasping. At least he was, more than she’d be, probably. He couldn’t even start to fathom what had just happened in the last couple of hours of his life.

  “No…” He stammered, clearing his throat to speak out. “I have no idea of what happened, Aubry, I just… I don’t know.”

  Aubry sighed, twisting his lips in suspicion. The sheriff knew him well enough to recall Jason’s crisis when he used to abuse licit and illicit substances a few years behind, before and after
Michelle’s departure. Jason wanted to believe that, fortunately enough, he hadn’t got closer to any of those substances in the last years, but accepting that would mean accepting insanity and he was in right mind.

  Wasn’t he?

  He tried to retrace his day from the beginning, trying to find out something that could have caused all those experiences. Nothing, besides seeing Michelle’s ghost, if it were a ghost. Until the moment, he walked in the store, he was fully sure that that sight had been a mere mental trick, maybe even a healthy and alive Michelle trying to haunt him for his past. Now, after everything he had just seen, he wasn’t sure of anything else, anymore.

  “I didn’t get my two-year sobriety coin for nothing, Aubry.”

  “Jason… Marge is freaking out in there after what she witnessed. I barely know how to react to it. You were yelling…” The sheriff lowered his voice, while his eyes got lost in an imaginary line on the horizon. “You were calling for her. Michelle.”

  The sheriff lowered bowed his grey head down and removed his hat, creating a distracting while searching for nonexistent lint on the accessory. Jason, facing the ground, tried to put some sense to what he intended to say.

  “Aubry…”

  “Jason,” His speech came out dry and sharp, indicating something Jason already expected: a lecture to make him think about things he had so far avoided. “You were screaming for Michelle. All folks ‘round her knew her, they all miss her. And many still wonder what happened to her. This scene?” He shook his head and clicked his tongue. “It won’t make you any good.”

  “I’m not drinking, Aubry. You know me and you know I speak the truth.”

  Though the worst was gone, Jason was still having a hard time trying to control the trembling in his body and that throbbing that still bothered his chest. Adrenaline, he though, already feeling the urge to light up a cigarette; the only thing preventing him from using that damn placebo was Aubry’s presence, who would immediately judge it as an exchange of addiction.