Where Oblivion Dwells

by Lorena Franco

  CHAPTER 7

  Next morning, Dingle awoke to bad news once more. A third body had appeared in the river. It was the corpse of Mary Larson, a twenty-five-year-old woman who had been last seen on Saturday night, taking a walk with some of her friends. Unlike Ruby, Amy enjoyed drinking; but she hadn’t drunk that night. She had said goodbye to her friends, telling them she was going home. But she never got there. Unlike the other bodies, Mary’s body was missing her left hand, her eyes were bruised and there were no signs of rape. Again, the forensic team looked for clues, fingerprints or hair, but they found nothing. It was as if the victims hadn’t even tried to fight back. As if she hadn’t tried to survive. As if the killer was invisible, and untraceable.

  Paul and Amy woke up that morning in the same bed. Again, Amy had a terrible headache and dizziness because of her drinking the previous night, which made her stay asleep for a little longer.

  Meanwhile, Paul went down to the kitchen to make breakfast. His phone had several messages from Samuel, informing him of what had happened. Mary was well known in town, as were her parents and twin brothers, who were five years younger than her. Even though she never met Mary or her family, Paul telling her the news of another corpse showing up in the river got stuck in her heart like a dagger. What was going on? Why had everything started when she arrived to Dingle? Did she have something to do with it?

  “How old was she?” asked Amy, still sleepy and hungover.

  “Twenty-five. Like the others.”

  “To was twenty-five when he died,” said Amy, thoughtful.

  “Do you think that means something?”

  Amy shrugged, fearing it did. Fearing there was a chance that Tom’s death had something to do with these girls. And it pained her to think it did, because that would mean the old man that had attacked her the other night could be right. She shuddered just by thinking about it.

  “Paul, you don’t have to stay here anymore,” said Amy suddenly.

  “Do you want me to go?”

  “Yes. I haven’t been twenty-five for a while. I don’t think the murderer will come for me,” answered Amy with confidence, and a certain longing in her voice.

  Paul nodded. Perhaps it was for the best. He would return to his normal life in Dingle, he would focus once more on his paintings, and would visit the Butterfly only once in a while. His friends were right. Amy was an odd woman. Lonely, even if she had done an exception for him in the last couple of weeks.

  “Will you be alright?” asked Paul, unsure.

  “I think so.”

  Amy stood up and left for her room, and stayed in there until Paul picked up his stuff and left for Dingle. They would probably miss each other, but they probably needed to miss each other.

  To Amy, Butterfly seemed bigger without Paul in it. Half an hour after he had left she had already begun to miss him. But she remained strong in her decision, so she locked herself in her studio with a pack of cigarettes and a cup of coffee, and kept working on her novel.

  The hours went by fast, she even forgot to eat, and barely even noticed when night fell. She walked to the kitchen and made herself a sandwich. Again, she heard footsteps on the second floor. She looked outside the window. It couldn’t be Paul; his car wasn’t there. And she wasn’t crazy, her ears were not playing tricks on her. Someone was pacing in the hall. She felt scared, unable to go up the stairs, she went out to the porch. Into the dark. One more night, and she couldn’t even see the moon reflected on the sea. She went back inside and, confidently, went up the stairs, turning on every light. There was no one there, and the footsteps had stopped. Again, someone touched her shoulder.

  “What’s going on here?” she asked, cursing the moment she had decided to leave the safety of her apartment in London to live a solitary life on a cliff in Ireland. “Tom, is that you?”

  She received no answer. Inexplicably, a current of cold air flooded the hall. The windows were closed. Amy shuddered, going back downstairs and locking herself in her studio. It was the only place in the house were she felt safe.

  “I don’t want to be alone... I don’t want to be alone...” she repeated, taking her head in her hands and rubbing her exhausted eyes.

  She decided to open up Skype for the first time to talk to someone. She called Steve, who kindly answered her call.

  “Amy!” he greeted her smiling, with his hair even more disheveled than usual. “How’s Ireland? Are you alright?” he suddenly asked, noticing Amy’s paleness and her bloodshot eyes.

  “Yeah, yeah... I was just wondering... about that cats and dogs article. Eh... do you want me to add another kind of pet? Parrots... for example?”

  “Parrots?” Steve laughed. “Write whatever you want, Amy.”

  “Okay...”

  “Do you need anything else? I’m with my kids now, it’s insane.”

  “No, no, I’m sorry, I...”

  “Are you sure you are alright?”

  Amy felt herself forcing a smile and hung up. She entertained herself for a little while writing of dogs, cats and other kind of pets; until she heard footsteps again. She froze. She swallowed with difficulty and lit up nervously a cigarette. This time, the footsteps weren’t fast, but quiet. Slow... mysterious. Amy got goosebumps, and decided to get out. She had a bad feeling, and the horrible sensation that someone she couldn’t see was watching her intently.

  Once she got out, the outside lights were barely enough to help her find her car. She kept hearing those steps. They were coming for her. They were getting faster... closer. She ran, terrified, ignorant of what was chasing her, until she stumbled with a rock and fell hard on the floor, hitting herself in the head.

  She lied unconscious in the darkness of the night and the solitude of the cliff. The steps reached her and, faraway, a flickering light was seen in the cave that Amy felt attracted to from the first moment she had laid eyes on it...

  Paul spent the whole day painting. Attempting to forget Amy. He tried hard to avoid thinking of her. His friends were right; she was too odd... she would mean trouble for him. But then... why couldn’t he stop thinking of her? He didn’t believe she was a witch, or that the murders that had occurred since she arrived had been her fault. It was nonsense... just nonsense. Typical small town gossip, encouraged by the fear its inhabitants were experiencing. Paul didn’t believe in such things. He didn’t believe in witchcraft, ghosts, spells... the only thing he believed was that, somewhere out there, there was a son of a bitch who might attack once more.

  Samuel and his team kept working every day to find him, even if they were making absolutely no progress. They didn’t have a single lead. No clue. Nothing. However, they had decided to warn young women, specially those who were twenty-five years old, not to go out on their own until things went back to normal and they found the murderer.

  Exhausted, Paul checked his phone to make sure Amy hadn’t call or texted during the day. Nothing. It was nine o’clock... he could picture her in her porch, smoking her cigarettes and drinking her night tea, contemplating the darkness from her precious solitude.

  He decided to call her to make sure she was okay. By the third beep, he heard a deep breath from the other side of the line. Gasps. Whispering words, he couldn’t quite make out... and suddenly, the call was interrupted. Paul frowned and called again, but this time Amy didn’t pick up. He had a bad feeling. A hunch. Quickly, he got to his car and drove all the way to the Butterfly to make sure Amy was safe, to ensure that the incident with the telephone had only been a disturbance on the line, or something of the sorts.

  “Tom... you came for me...” whispered Amy, from the depths of the ocean. They were holding tight to each other, naked, skin against skin, kissing passionately. There was no fear. Just the heat of their bodies and the long lost love.

  “Shhh... don’t say anything,” said Tom, closing his eyes. “You’re dreaming. Be patient, Amy... be patient, Amy... be patient, Amy...”

  Tom began to repeat himself, sinking in the water and leaving Amy
alone in the vastness of the calm ocean, that suddenly turned wild and fierce. Amy swam against the high waves, but they were too powerful for someone as small and weak as her. Suddenly, a multitude of red butterflies came to her aid, and she suddenly found herself floating over the read sea that no longer threatened her.

  Amy woke up in her bed, confused and disoriented, with a strong headache that wasn’t caused, for once, by alcohol. Next to her, Paul smiled brightly.

  “What happened?” asked Amy.

  “You bumped your head real bad. I called you last night and there was something weird going on with your phone, so I realized there was something wrong and came here. I found you on the ground with a bloody head, unconscious.”

  “I think I fell...” said Amy, unwilling to explain Paul the truth. She didn’t want him to believe she was crazy, suffering hallucinations that had probably been caused by her insistence of living locked up in a solitary house on top of a cliff, where the nights were dark and the landscape grim. “So you called?”

  “Yeah... but what I heard wasn’t nice. Whispers, moans...” explained Paul frowning, trying to forget the hideous voice he had heard.

  “But I couldn’t have answered, Paul. I left my phone in the living room.”

  “Perhaps I was mistaken,” said Paul, making light of it. “Do you want me to stay?”

  “Do you want to stay?”

  Paul nodded, smiling. Amy rolled her eyes and laughed, taking a hand to her head.

  “It hurts.”

  “I know,” said Paul, caressing her head. “Do you feel dizzy? Can you see properly?”

  “I’m alright.”

  “What were you doing? Where were you going?” asked Paul.

  “I don’t know, Paul...”

  “You don’t want to tell me.”

  “No.”

  “To keep me from thinking you’re crazy,” said Paul, staring at her intently.

  “Maybe.”

  “Okay,” he laughed. “I’ll go to the guest’s room,” he rose and winked at her.

  “Paul.”

  “Yes, Amy?” he answered by the door, about to step out.

  “Why don’t you stay with me?”

  Paul lied next to Amy, who didn’t turn on her back this time. They looked at each other and smiled. Amy, with a trembling hand and a trouble mind, stroked Paul’s face. It was coarse because of his beard, but it felt nice to touch him. Familiar and close, the heat that came from his body was appealing. Paul let himself go. He got closer to Amy and did what he had wanted to do from the moment he saw her. He kissed her. Slowly, sweetly... they kissed as if they were an old couple, not as if they were sharing their first kiss. They caressed each other, got closer. And closer. Their kisses stopped being sweet and slow, turning instead passionate and exploring. But the moment Paul moved his hand towards her legs Amy, confused, stopped him.

  “No, Paul... not today,” she said, frowning.

  Paul accepted her decision, and kept kissing her and caressing her with care and tenderness. He didn’t need anything else.

  Amy felt alive once more. She had spent so much time without being kissed. She suddenly wished she had been kissed like this earlier... so much earlier.

  Three weeks later, Paul packed his bags and traveled to Berlin, where his paintings where in high demand. He would stay there for five days, to attend a couple of important exhibitions. One in Michael Haas Gallery and another one in the prestigious Kreuzberg/Bethanien. He said goodbye to Amy in her porch, feeling a little concerned.

  “I will call you every day, okay? Don’t scare me, please,” he warned, kissing her. His kisses had turned into an addiction for her.

  “It’s awful that you have to go...” said Amy.

  “It’s awful that you didn’t want to come,” answered Paul.

  “I have some pending articles. They were very comprehensive by letting me work from here, I can’t leave them hanging.”

  “That’s okay, it’s only five days, anyway. You won’t have enough time to miss me.”

  “I still will,” answered Amy, sweetly.

  “And I will miss you too,” said Paul while embracing her.

  Dingle had been left out of the papers since there hadn’t been any horrible crime to report. Everything had gone back to normal, and Steve had finally stopped insisting for Amy to write an article on the serial murders. Amy had stopped hearing steps in the Butterfly. She hadn’t had time to, since Paul had stayed with her constantly after her unfortunate fall.

  The day Paul left for Berlin, Amy tried to keep herself busy to avoid thinking too much of him. She wrote for hours, walked on the beach and sat in her porch to enjoy her cigarettes, her coffees and her solitude.

  When night fell, the fear returned. She dreaded listening again to those steps, feeling an invisible hand on her shoulder, a bloodcurdling draft. She turned on the TV and turned up the volume to avoid hearing anything else.

  Even so, she still felt that she was being watched. It was not the same sensation she had experienced back in London, when the man that had turned out to be Mr. Tanner had stalked her from the street. She was worried about how paranoid it made her being unable to see that other side Tom had told her about some times. Feeling no interest for anything that was on TV that night, she closed her eyes. Tom was talking about that invisible world again, the one the living couldn’t see.

  “I’ve seen it, Amy. And there is more grief than joy. You can’t even imagine the amount of lost souls there are, the confusion on that other side...”

  “What side, Tom?”

  “The invisible one. The dead one. The other dimension. They can see us from that side, but we can’t see them. Some times, with some luck, we can feel them... and they can touch us. Warn us. Give us some signs. But be careful... they aren’t all good, Amy. Some of them can be very hurtful.”

  “Why are they trapped?”

  “It depends,” said Tom. “Some of them don’t know they’re dead, they’re lost. Others have pending business, most of them, actually, specially those who died young. And others are mad. Furious, for not rising up, for having to settle to wander for years, even centuries through that hidden dimension. But there are also guardian spirits, those who are closest to us and can protect us.”

  “And how is it like?” asked Amy, skeptical.

  “I wouldn’t know, I’ve never been there,” laughed Tom.

  “But you know it.”

  “I’ve seen it. But only on the surface.”

  “Why can you see it?”

  Tom couldn’t answer that question. Why could he see something nobody else could? Why did those terrifying visions haunt him, and not others?

  Amy opened her eyes and looked at the kitchen’s window. The curtain moved. Just a little, but enough for her to know that there was someone on that other dimension who was trying to reach her.

  “Tell me, who are you?” asked Amy, struggling to remain calm and appear confident.

  A step. Two steps. Three. Amy waited for a couple of minutes before speaking again. But, suddenly, that familiar sensation of being observed vanished. In an instant. And she finally felt safe inside the Butterfly’s walls.

  Before going to bed, Amy lit up a cigarette, made herself some green tea and stepped into the porch. That night there were no clouds in the sky, and the moon shined brightly, giving the sea a beautiful, supernatural glow. Amy took a drag on her cigarette, thinking of Paul. Of his touch... his kisses... but she also thought of her guilt. Why did she feel like she didn’t deserve to be happy, even twelve years later? Tom was dead... and, if she were to believe her dreams, he was pleased to see her move on. Again, she tried to imagine Tom at thirty-seven.

  A titillating light that came from that far away cave brought Amy back from her thoughts. It was a powerful and disturbing light. It called her... demanded her attention. A minute went by, two, three... five minutes later the light vanished, and Amy heard steps once more. They came from the back of the house, but they were different
than before. They were stepping confidently on the grass. Amy rose up from her chair immediately and went back inside. She locked herself in and stared out of the living room’s window, a terrified scream escaping her mouth. She couldn’t believe what her eyes were showing her, she was convinced they were wrong. What she was looking at was real.

  He. He was right there. Looking at her with a smile on his face, as if time had never passed. As if death didn’t exist.

  CHAPTER 8

  When Paul arrived to Berlin it was already night. The streets, different from the ones in Dingle, welcomed him with their festive and relaxed air. Before checking in the Riu Plaza Berlin Hotel, he decided to grab a beer in a bar nearby. A group of women stared at him with desire. But Paul, who in another moment would have walked right towards them, and would have probably invited one of them to his hotel room, just smiled and ignored them.

  An hour later, settled down in his hotel room, Paul called his agent, who would arrive to the city the next day, traveling from Rome, where he had just opened the exhibition of another one of his artists.

  “Paul! How are you?” asked joyfully his agent.

  “I’m in Berlin, Anthony.”

  “In Berlin? What are you doing in Berlin?” asked Anthony on the other side of the line, confused.

  “Are you kidding me? I’m here for the exhibits,” answered Paul, perplexed.

  “Exhibits? You have one the next month in London, but... Berlin? Not in Berlin, Paul.”

  “I’m confused. Two days ago a truck came by to drive my paintings to Michael Haas Gallery and Kreuzberg/Bethanien.”

  “Paul, I’m getting worried here,” said concerned Anthony Erickson, who had been working with Paul for fifteen years now. “We never agreed to have exhibits there. We discussed Michael Haas a year ago, but we never reached an agreement. And I’m pretty sure we’ve never even contacted Kreuzberg/Bethanien,” he explained gravely.

  “But then...”

  “I’m afraid someone must have stolen your paintings,” exhaled Anthony uneasily, trying to stay calm.