by Amy Cross
“It's complicated,” I mutter again, focusing on some more toast that needs buttering.
I'm aware that she's loitering, as if she can't quite believe that I'm going to eat all of this, but after a moment she turns and heads back to the counter. Five years ago, I would have been mortified to attract any attention at all, but these days I just need the food. My budget is slowly dwindling and I've more or less given up on lunch. Breakfast is for healthy things and dinner is for energy, at least that's how it's fixed in my head, and -
“I didn't expect to find you here.”
Startled, I look up to see Amanda standing nearby. I haven't seen her since the survivors' meeting last night, and to be honest she didn't really say much to me back then. I was under the impression that she and the others weren't entirely in favor of my visit. Still, having been accosted by Marie earlier, now it seems that it's Amanda's turn.
“Do you mind if I join you for a moment?” she asks.
“Sure,” I reply, mainly because I can't think of a non-rude way to turn her away.
“I spoke to Luke earlier,” she continues as she sits down. “He told me you're going to leave town. He said you weren't entirely on board with his theories regarding what's been going on.”
“Everyone's entitled to their own ideas,” I tell her. “I just prefer to focus on -”
“Thank God you're got a smarter head on your shoulders,” she continues with a sigh. “Luke has been driving everyone crazy with his ridiculous ideas. Have you seen that stupid book he carts around everywhere? The man's delusional. Sometimes he starts going on about that Chanciechaunie bullshit in our meetings, and I swear...”
She rolls her eyes.
“He's a grown man,” she adds. “He should be past the stage by now where he blames monsters for everything that happens.”
“I think he's just desperate for an explanation,” I point out. “Any explanation.”
“Well then he's an idiot.”
“That seems a little harsh.”
“The others are just as bad,” she adds. “They think that just because something awful happened to them as children, they're entitled to sympathy and delicate treatment for the rest of their lives. Honestly, the only reason I go to those meetings at all is that I want to see how I shouldn't behave. The world today is so touchy-feely, full of people who think it's good to open up about their feelings. If you ask me, there's nothing wrong with growing up, shutting your mouth, and dealing with things privately. Without making a big scene.”
She looks down at her hands for a moment.
“I should have ordered a coffee,” she mutters.
I signal to the waitress to bring a coffee over.
“I was seven,” Amanda adds.
“Seven?”
“When it happened to me.” She stares at her hands for a few seconds longer, before looking at me. “My mother took me to a friend's house. An apartment building.”
“You told me yesterday,” I remind her.
She frowns. “I did?”
“At the meeting.”
“Oh. Sure. Sorry, I forgot.”
“It's fine.”
I pause as the waitress sets a coffee down in front of her, and I wait until we're alone again before I continue. I feel as if, despite her insistence that she's fine, Amanda must have some reason for seeking me out and sitting at my table. Maybe she has something she wants to tell me, or maybe she's just lonely.
“I come here every night,” she says finally. “Father Prior once told me I should try to get out of the house more, spend more time around people. I think he meant I should try dating, but instead I just started coming to the diner every evening. Still, it works for me. I'm slowly getting used to being around people, although it's hard to really make connections.” She pauses. “It affects you, you know. Surviving something like that. I guess it brings out something different in each of us, it exaggerates some part of us that was already in there. Me, it brought out my resilience, and my refusal to listen to bullshit. I don't need to believe in monsters. The whole thing is already bad enough.”
I wait for her to continue, but she seems lost in thought. I'm not even sure why she's telling me all of this.
“And apparently it brings out my desperation,” she adds, leaning back and sighing. There might even be tears in her eyes. “I'm sorry, I shouldn't be bugging you like this.”
“It's fine,” I reply, as she gets to her feet. “I mean, you're not bugging me, you -”
“You should stop looking for this man,” she continues suddenly, interrupting me again. “Don't you have a life to get back to, Emily?”
“I just -”
“Or are you going to spend the rest of your life like this, bouncing from town to town, constantly hunting for someone without any hope of finding him.”
I take a deep breath. She doesn't understand why I'm here.
“Do you have a family waiting for you?” she asks. “A husband? Another child? An empty room where your son should have been sleeping?”
“I don't think that's relevant,” I tell her.
“It is if you're planning to spend the rest of your life chasing shadows. I guess that's why I came to find you tonight.” She takes a step back. “Go home, Emily.”
“You don't -”
“Go home. Please!”
With that, she turns and heads out of the diner, leaving her coffee untouched. There was something very sad about her, something haunting, and it's clear that she and the others in that little church group are still not over their childhood experiences. As I finish my late-night breakfast, I can't help wondering whether there are other little groups like theirs, dotted all over the country, keeping to themselves while they struggle with everything that happened to them as children.
But their experiences are not the same as mine. Maybe they can't understand why I have to keep searching for the truth, and why I can never go home. That's fine, though. They don't have to understand.
Finally, once I've finished my breakfast and drunk Amanda's coffee, I use the washroom to freshen up and then I head to the door.
I'm going to be driving all night. I need to -
Suddenly I feel my phone buzzing in my pocket. I checked for messages while I was in the washroom, but in my exhaustion I must have forgotten to turn it off again. Slipping it into my hand, I look at the screen, braced to see Craig trying to call me, but instead I find that it's Luke. I consider not answering, but finally I accept the call.
“Listen,” I tell him, “I just -”
“Are you still here?” he stammers, sounding panicked. “Are you in Redfield?”
“I'm just about to leave. I'm not -”
“Thank God you're still here!” he continues, and now I can hear raised voices behind him. “You have to get to my place right now!”
“What's wrong?” I ask, startled. “What -”
“It's Marie!” he continues. “We're trying to keep her calm, but she's in hysterics. Emily, please, you have to get here!”
“Why?” I stammer. Luke, you're not -”
“She saw him!” he blurts out, and I can hear someone sobbing on the other end of the line. “Tonight! Right here in Redfield! Marie saw the man again! The man who tried to take her years ago!”
***
As soon as I reach the corridor outside Luke's apartment, I hear Marie sobbing up ahead. She sounds utterly traumatized, panicked even, and my first thought is that this isn't the right place for her. She should be in hospital.
“Jesus Christ,” Amanda mutters under her breath as I reach the door, which Luke has left ajar. “How much more of this bullshit do we have to put up with?”
Further along the corridor, one of the neighbors is peering out, evidently startled by the noise.
“What are you looking at?” Amanda asks as soon as she sees him, causing the guy to pull back and shut his door. “I hate people like that,” she adds, turning to me. “Goddamn parasites. Why can't they just leave well alone?” Sh
e pauses for a moment, eyeing me with a hint of concern. “He called you too? You shouldn't have come. We don't need outsiders getting involved.”
To be honest, as we step into Luke's apartment and then push the door shut behind us, I can kind of understand why that guy was curious about the noise. Marie is retching as she sobs, and I can hear a couple of people trying to get her to calm down. Following Amanda to the front room, I'm shocked to see that Marie is rocking back and forth in an armchair, while Luke and another man from the church group, Carl, have their hands on her shoulders as if they're trying to keep her from running out of the room.
She's rambling, spewing out words, but her voice is trembling and it's impossible to tell what she's saying.
Amanda marches across the room and stops in front of the chair. She looks down at Marie for a moment, saying nothing, and then she reaches out, placing a hand on the sobbing woman's face.
Marie looks up at her with tear-filled eyes.
Suddenly Amanda slaps her hard, sending her thudding back in the chair.
“Hey!” I call out, hurrying over.
“Get away from her!” Luke hisses, reaching out to hold Amanda back as Marie curls into a weeping ball.
“This is bullshit!” Amanda says firmly, her voice filled with anger. “Self-absorbed, narcissistic bullshit. And do you know the worst part? I saw it coming a mile off!”
“You had no right to do that!” Carl tells her as he puts his arms around Marie. “Look at her! She's hysterical!”
“She's acting like a child,” Amanda continues, through gritted teeth. “Come on, Marie, this does no-one any good. Whatever happened to you tonight, you've managed to get everyone's attention. Isn't that what this is really about? We all know full well that you certainly didn't see the -”
“I saw him!” Marie hisses, turning to her. “Don't you dare tell me that I didn't because I did!”
“Tonight?” Amanda asks, raising a skeptical eyebrow. “Twenty-plus years after the last time, one night after Emily just happened to show up in town and stir things up a little, suddenly you think you saw him again? Marie, you've always been hyper-sensitive, and it's obvious that these triggers simply -”
“He was outside my building!” Marie blurts out desperately, as tears stream down her face. “I looked out the window and I saw him in the little garden opposite, staring straight at me!”
“You saw shadows,” Amanda tells her.
“I saw him!” Marie screams, suddenly pounding her fists on the arms of the chair. “I did! I saw him! I swear! Do you think I'm crazy?”
Amanda mutters something under her breath.
“It's okay,” Luke tells Marie as she slumps back in a fit of sobs. “Calm down and try to breathe steadily. You're going to hyperventilate at this rate.”
“She called us in a panic,” Carl explains, looking first at me and then at Amanda. “When we got there, Luke stayed with her and I searched that little patch of garden. There was no-one there, and no sign of any disturbance. I'm not saying she was wrong, but if there was someone around, they'd gone by the time we arrived.”
“Like I said,” Amanda mutters. “She's just being hysterical.”
“It was him!” Marie shouts, lunging forward again. “I swear to God, it was him! His face is burned into my mind!”
Amanda rolls her eyes.
“We need to look at this logically,” Carl says, and Marie seems to respond to his attempts to calm her down. “Amanda has a good point, Marie. Why would he come back after all these years? As far as we know, he only ever goes after children.” He forces a smile. “In case you hadn't noticed, honey, none of us are kids these days. We're all getting on in years.”
“I always knew he'd come back for me,” Marie sobs. “I knew it in my heart! He didn't give up on any of us. He just decided to wait!”
“That doesn't really make sense,” Carl tells her. “Here's what I think. I think some bad memories have been stirred up over the past day or two, and bad memories have a way of making all of us a little riled. Obviously the whole thing just affected you a little more than it affected the rest of us, but there's no shame in that. Your emotions are just closer to the surface.”
“There's plenty of shame,” Amanda mutters under her breath.
“That doesn't help!” Luke tells her.
“It's the truth! Look at us, we're all fucked up! And you act like we're supposed to somehow be proud of that fact? Like it's a badge of honor?”
“You don't understand,” Marie whimpers, burying her face against Carl's shoulder. “He's back! He's coming for me!”
“Because you have to be the start of the show, huh?” Amanda asks. “Because you're just a victim, and you don't know how to be anything else.”
“Maybe this isn't helping,” Luke says, getting to his feet. “Amanda, we can deal with Marie from here on. Maybe you just want to come back in the morning, when things have calmed down.”
“You don't want the voice of reason here?” she asks.
“It's just -”
“Fine,” she adds, turning and heading back to the hallway. “Let me know how the delicate princess fares during the night. And just remember, she's out of her goddamn mind half the time anyway, so it's not exactly surprising that she's gone nuts on us now. If you ask me, she needs some pills to calm her down, and then she needs to grow the hell up. But I'm done with all of this. Enjoy your meetings, I won't be coming anymore.” Opening the door, she turns to me. “Emily? You're not staying, are you?”
“I might stick around for a while,” I reply, “just to make sure she's okay.”
“Fine. Whatever. I tried to save you from these morons.”
With that, she heads out into the corridor and slams the door shut, leaving me to turn to Marie.
“I think Carl's getting her calmed down,” Luke says after a moment. “We'll find a way to get through this. We have to, but...” He pauses, with fear in his eyes as Marie continues to sob. “She can't be right. She just can't be. There's no way Chanciechaunie has come back for us.”
***
“Do you think it's all in her head?” I ask a few minutes later, as Luke makes coffee in the kitchen. “She seems so certain.”
He doesn't reply immediately. Instead, he sets the coffee machine going and places four cups on the counter, before finally turning to me.
“I've always dreaded this moment,” he says finally.
“The idea that the man might come back?”
“The idea that someone, most likely Marie, would say they saw him.” He pauses. “Right now, I genuinely don't now what to believe.”
“She seems to really think he was outside her building,” I point out. “Regardless of everything else, I don't think she's lying.”
“Of course she's not lying. Marie might be a lot of things, but she's honest to her core and she'd never, ever make up something like this. This isn't something any of us would ever joke about.” He grabs some spoons and sets them next to the cups, and for a moment he seems to be busying himself with little jobs, as if he wants to keep his mind off everything that has happened tonight. Finally, however, he simply stops and stares down at the cups for a few seconds, before turning to me again. “It's possible,” he says, his voice trembling slightly. “That the man is back, I mean. I can't dismiss the idea out of hand.”
“But you don't know that for sure,” I point out.
“We know very little for sure.”
I wait for him to continue, but he seems genuinely lost for words. It's very clear, however, that he can't just dismiss Marie's claims out of hand.
“Where does she live?” I ask finally.
“Why?”
“Give me the address,” I continue, feeling for the first time as if I know exactly what I have to do. “She says she saw the man outside her apartment, right? So I'm going to go take a look. Maybe I can find him.”
Chapter Ten
I have to hit the side of the flashlight a couple of times before it comes
back to life, but finally I'm able to shine the beam past the corner of the parking lot and over toward the garden facing Marie's building.
All I see are trees and bushes. But if she's to be believed, Marie spotted the man here tonight, just a few hours ago. Which means he might have left some kind of trace, unless Luke's right and he's some kind of monster that comes and goes as he pleases. I'm pretty sure there'll be footprints, though. Whatever Marie saw, it was just a man.
Reaching into my jacket pocket, I double-check that I still have the knife I brought from Luke's kitchen.
***
The garden itself turns out to be overgrown and thick with bushes, which makes it difficult for me to make my way through. Every step involves twisting my boot free from another patch of curled branches, and I make slow progress as I head up the steep incline toward the spot where the tree-line begins. To be honest, I feel like a fool out here, and I can't imagine what anyone would say if they spotted me struggling through the undergrowth. Still, I know I can't give up, because this is where Marie said the figure was standing as it watched her through the window.
There's nothing here now.
Turning, I see that the light is still switched on in her kitchen. I can see the bare counter, with a carton of milk left exactly as she described. Through her tears, she explained that earlier she was pouring herself a glass when she spotted the man out here in the darkness, and that's when she ran. The milk carton is in full view, and I'm more or less square-on with the window, which means I must be more or less where the man was standing.
I cast the flashlight's beam all around, but there's no sign of anyone out here, and no sign that anyone ever was. Deep down, I can't help thinking that maybe Marie imagined the whole thing after all.
Even if the man exists, it's hard to believe that he happened oh-so-conveniently to show up in Redfield right now, just as I'm here.
For the next few minutes, I make my way closer to the tree-line, while shining the flashlight down at the ground in case I spot any hint of someone having been here. I don't quite know what I'm hoping to find, and I guess it's unlikely that the man – even if he was around – left anything substantial. Still, I can't shake a hint of disappointment as I reach the edge of the trees and shine the flashlight further ahead. All I see are thin, tall trunks reaching up toward the starless sky.
