“Oh, wait, there is something else,” the woman called out at her back.
Bella stopped in her tracks. She turned, looking back to where the woman stood, wider than her door.
“I don’t know how I forgot this. God knows I dreamed about it enough since then.”
“What is it?” Bella asked, wary.
“His smile,” Miss Zelkova said. “It was real big and real wide. Like a shark or some kind of monster hiding in a kid’s closet. Like something you’d see in one of those teen horror movies, you know? Hungry—kinda hungry. Like he wanted to take a chomp out of that kid. You know what I mean?”
“Yeah.” Bella felt the lump in her throat grow even larger. “I know what you mean.”
Chapter Thirteen
That was the thing about these old buildings, he thought. They could put a fresh coat of paint on it and call it “heritage” for all the hipsters out there, but it didn’t change the fact that they were still what they were—old, rickety, and easy to break in to.
He bent his fingers backward and hooked the bony mount of his palms against the wooden windowsill. He’d estimated it would only take one good heave, and he was right. There was a brief cracking sound and the paint-glued frame gave way. He felt a thrill up his spine as the window slid up from where it had been stagnant for all these years, fully opening into its frame.
Thank god for fire escapes.
He’d been watching her loft apartment for a few weeks now. It was his break in between his other projects—his other blatant calls for her attention. It filled up his hours and made him feel that much closer to her. How much had she changed in the two decades since she’d been his little duckling? God knew there wasn’t much online about her. He’d obsessively searched her name over the last half a year, and the only thing that any of the search engines responded with was a dull photo of her graduating from the police academy a few years ago. He’d found it hard to correlate the two in his mind. The Isabella he knew—tender and soft-lipped with limbs like some sort of sexless Shakespearian fairy—had been replaced by someone much tougher-looking. There was damage etched into every one of her features now, like broken bones that hadn’t fully healed. She looked wrong to him. She was off-kilter, as if he needed to get his searching, pointed fingers into her gears and adjust the picture.
The night air, damp and empty, whipped up around the building and buffered him where he stood. It was risky being out on the fire escape. Although it was the middle of the night, there was still the constant threat of being seen.
The window wide open in front of him, he swung his long legs over the sill and slipped into her apartment without a sound.
She hadn’t left a light on. He wasn’t surprised. He imagined she was too practical for that. These kind of downtown loft apartments weren’t cheap, even those that were still in the midst of eventual gentrification. She’d be saving her pennies to afford the space, turning off any extra lights, living on bagged salads and cans of tuna, stocking her bathroom with past-due shower gels from the dollar store with names like “Berry Paradise” or “Yay Yay Vay Cay.” He felt a familiar tightening in his groin. This was a glorious intrusion. All of her little telling details that she would even hide from a Tinder date were splayed out before him, whorish and inviting.
He walked into the center of the main space. The ceilings were abnormally high, the streetlights outside etching tall, crucifix-like shadows onto the wall from the windows behind him. It was silent. There was no ticking clock, no muted radio voices—the only thing he could hear was the slight hum of the stainless refrigerator in the tiny kitchen area across the room.
There was a grumbling in his stomach he hadn’t expected. It tightened in his torso, causing his forehead to bloom with sweat. How long had it been since he’d eaten? He paused for a second, his hand resting on the leather of her love seat. He couldn’t remember. Had it been that long?
He made his way to the refrigerator that was cooing at him from where it was tucked under her stairs. He’d just get something small to eat and then make his way up those steps to the wonderland that was her bedroom. His groin tightened again. He visualized himself slipping under her sheets, rubbing his cheeks and limbs against her furniture, marking everything she owned with his scent like a vengeful alley cat.
But first…
He opened the small refrigerator door. The light struck his face, a pale lemon yellow in the dark apartment. A bottle of milk, a carton of eggs, a half-empty bottle of prosecco, and a small plastic cup of canned peaches stared back at him. He scooped up the plastic cup and ripped the thin plastic off the top. Mounting the stairs to her bedroom, he allowed the slimy half-moon crescents of sweetness to slip down his throat without chewing. His mouth, chalky from the exertion of making his way up the fire escape, sang with the syrupy sweetness of the fruit. He paused at the top of the spiral staircase and dropped his stolen delight, the dull clack sounding louder than necessary as the empty cup hit the floor.
Her bedroom.
A queen-sized bed lay on the floor of the upper loft. She’d hadn’t bothered with a box spring or anything as precious as a headboard. Instead, she’d simply placed the mattress directly on the mismatched, salvaged wood that made up most of the loft. Her duvet was tangled up with the sheet, a lazy slug spilling off the mattress and onto the ground.
His little duckling.
But not so little now. She’d been so young when they’d first started their game. Things would have changed by now, and he needed to take that into account. Her body would have altered over the years, becoming more wanton, crusted with random hair, moles, and skin tags. There would be smells—animal smells that made his peach-filled stomach churn to think about. Maybe he wouldn’t be able to handle it after all. Maybe she’d be too bulgy for him, too muscular. Too tough…
He looked away from her bed, almost embarrassed. He made his way across the room to where her dresser stood against the wall. She’d obviously left in a hurry, and tank tops, bras, and underwear hung from the half open doors as if it’d been gutted. His heart beat faster for the first time that night as he approached it. When she’d been his, there had been none of these adult trappings to contend with. There had been no lace and no front or back closures. No adjustable straps or any such fakery.
His hand trembled as he pulled one of the loose bras free from where it was squished, half hanging out of a drawer. He rubbed the sizable cups swaddled with a soft, no-nonsense cotton between his fingertips. White. She had chosen white. No red, no baby pink, no black… not even a hint of lace or any kind of frivolity. This was the bra of a woman who wore them out of necessity rather than fashion.
Before he knew what he was doing, he raised the bra to his face and buried his nose in the inner lining. His entire body stiffened. No more than a shadow in the silent room, he went rigid as the smell of her stale flesh filled his nostrils. He still knew it. He still knew her smell.
The sound of a key scraping in the lock downstairs halted him. He felt his pupils inside his still-thumping eyes widen as his instincts took over. She was home. He’d calculated at least a half hour or more before she came back from her nightly ramble. He hadn’t counted on her being home this soon.
The excitement building in the lower half of his body dissipated. He shoved the bra into his pocket, limp and balled up on itself like a dead spider. He needed to get out of here. This wasn’t how they were supposed to meet again. For Christ’s sake, this wasn’t the plan.
No, he had other plans, and he couldn’t wait to get started.
Chapter Fourteen
If Bella’s inner voice hadn’t still been in hiding, she would’ve never opened her apartment door. She would’ve paid attention when a strange tingling went up her spine the moment she stepped out of the elevator. She would’ve listened to it shouting at her to turn around as she fumbled in the pocket of her hoodie for her keys.
But it was silent.
She was starting to lose faith in her own stability. She�
��d worked so hard to tell herself that it couldn’t be Salem trying to contact her over the last few days. She’d even managed to convince herself to ignore all the obvious signs that her body had been giving her: dizziness, loss of appetite, lack of sleep, sudden bouts of rage, olfactory hallucinations, and… yes, even audible ones, although she’d never tell—her entire physiognomy had been rebelling against the script she’d been forcing on it.
Miss Zelkova had sealed it. That woman had looked right through the illusion she’d created and left Bella with no other option than to deal with the truth. Salem was back. He’d crawled his way out from whatever toddler’s bed he’d been hiding under to somehow, inexplicably, find his way back to her.
But why? What could he possibly want from her that he hadn’t already taken?
A familiar mix of anger and frustration made her eyes sting with tears. She cursed under her breath and stabbed the key into her lock. After a few failed attempts, she finally kicked the broad door open, cursing again at her own tired clumsiness. Bella slapped the light switch by the door, turning on the few small pot lights that lit the entranceway.
Her hoodie was moist with her own sweat. She’d given up on running in the gym these nights. The kid in charge of cleaning and disinfecting the machines during the night shift had made eye contact one too many times, and it’d sullied what had been her private experience. Something about being outside and running the empty streets brought her more peace these days anyway. Doors and locked rooms were not her friends.
She looked at herself in the mirror she’d hung behind the door. There were dark hollows under her eyes, far too deep for a woman in her early thirties. She touched her sweaty cheek, running her fingers down the small creases that were developing by her mouth. She’d never been the kind of woman who cared about her appearance, but in the harsh spotlights of her entranceway, she looked at least ten years older than her true age.
Bella sighed. She closed her eyes for a moment, feeling how hot her lids felt when they finally rested. Sleep. More sleep. She could never catch up. When she opened her eyes again, she noticed an object beside the stairs. She squinted into the mirror, trying to remember when she had dropped the plastic cup and why.
Had she taken to sleepwalking? Was she really that exhausted that her short-term memory was starting to suffer?
She flicked on the lights in the main room and turned around. An empty cup of peach slices lay in a pool of its own juices at the base of her stairs. Had she actually eaten that, thrown it on the floor, and then forgotten it?
Those peaches have been sitting in that refrigerator for months, and you know it.
You didn’t eat those. Someone else did.
Someone else has been in this apartment.
The voice returned. Her stomach curled into a fist-like knot, and she tore open her hoodie to reach for her gun. Stupid. She’d taken it off when she’d got home from work, of course.
Bella looked across the room to where her gun sat on the coffee table. Her senses were on high alert. Any kind of self-deprecating inner monologue was completely silenced as she strained to make out the sound of whoever was in her loft. And he was there. She could feel him now. Now that she’d let herself listen, she could smell and feel him all around her.
“Motherfucker,” she mumbled. She moved, low and quick across the floor. Her hand reaching for her gun, she was just about to touch it when she something solid struck her between the shoulder blades. Her vision went red with the force of the blow, and the air soared from her lungs. Bella stumbled forward, missing her gun and stumbling to the floor.
In a second she was up, her eyes wide and panicked.
He was there.
In the dim light of her apartment, he looked like a sentient shadow slipping across the brick walls and toward the open window. She scooped up her gun and heard her own voice shouting at him to freeze.
He didn’t look back. He wouldn’t even spare her a glance as he ducked his long, thin body out of the window and onto the fire escape. Still howling, her heart thumping so hard in her throat her voice shook, Bella raced across the room.
She pulled herself onto the fire escape after him. She felt it wobbling under her feet as he climbed down beneath her. His feet tapping on the rusted steel, he was disappearing into the night quicker than she could keep up with him.
It’s him. You know it’s him. Fuck the safety and fuck protocol. Blow his head off before he hits the ground and be done with it.
Bella whipped around the corners of the fire escape after him, the pounding of her own feet drowning out his. If she could just speed up. If she could just make up for those few seconds between them. If she could just summon the courage to aim, shoot, and kill.
Instead, Bella heard her rasping breath catch in her throat as the man dropped onto a parked car below. There was a loud, metallic crunch, followed by the sound of the car alarm beginning to blare. A chorus of frenzied barking followed.
Bella watched, helpless and rigid with fury, as the shadow melted seamlessly into the depths of the alleys that ran through her neighbourhood like arteries clogged with darkness. It was then that it dawned on her: not only had she lost him, but there was no longer a line between what he could do and what he would do.
Chapter Fifteen
The farmhouse held its breath whenever the neighbor visited. She could feel it stiffen as soon as his truck came up the gravel drive. At the first sound of the blustering motor, everything began to scurry, altering and hiding itself before the doorbell rang, making itself acceptable. The boiler clicked off, the pipes stopped ticking, the footsteps became quieter, the lock on her door was checked, and her mother stopped singing. She was a secret. She was a dangerous, terrible secret. The little girl was a broken toy to be brushed into the closet when anyone came to visit. She was an accumulation of dirt so disgusting, so embarrassing, that even the house tried to hide her away.
Despite the ominous silence upstairs, Bella didn’t hesitate to crawl off her mattress and make her way to the window across the cellar. The concrete floor was so cold it almost felt damp beneath her feet. She moved carefully toward the bright, winter light that cut a path across the room. Isabella stopped and bent over at the waist. A nauseating heat had settled in the base of her pelvis that made her entire lower body feel as if it were made of concrete. The pressure sent squiggles of electricity down her legs every time she moved.
She was sick. He had done this to her—Mr. Ross and his cracked plates of Ding Dongs, Twinkies, and sickly sweet, off-brand orange soda. He had torn her up inside, reached into where her soul lived with his awful, needy body.
He was feeding off her, and soon there would be nothing left.
She clenched her jaw against the pain and continued across the room. When she reached the window, she pulled a crate from the shadows and positioned it against the wall. When she raised her foot to step upward, there was a ripping sensation between her legs that made her eyes water. Her gasp was barely audible. She closed her eyes against the tears.
If she didn’t do this, if she didn’t do this now, she’d never leave this basement. He wouldn’t be satisfied until he’d turned her inside out.
She held her breath and stepped onto the crate, balancing herself on the slats. Pain seared through her injured groin. Steadying herself a little more, she strained upward to look out the window.
The neighbor’s feet were visible from where he stood by his truck. He made a cheery clucking sound, and his dog, a long-legged hound no more than a few months old, tumbled out onto the driveway. Bella’s chest was tight from not breathing. This was her chance.
She’d become aware of the puppy a month ago. The neighbour came to visit Ross and his brothers once a week, but he was never invited in. The old man seemed happy enough to spend a Sunday afternoon drinking beer on the farmhouse’s front porch, however, and never once tried to come in. They’d sit together, their dirty and beaten shoes visible where they were planted on the steps to her right, discussing
every single fact in what Bella was starting to recognize as an unfair and largely pointless universe.
The first time the neighbor had brought his new dog, it’d leapt directly from the truck and half-tumbled, half-ran toward her window. Bella had struggled to make sense out of the wet, snuffling nose that was pressed up against the glass. The idea that it was something as innocent as a puppy hadn’t occurred to her. The world had altered so much around her that she wasn’t sure there were good things left anymore. Not for her at least.
She wasn’t in as much pain then as she was now. Once she had known what the slobbering creature was, she’d leapt to her feet and was halfway to the window before Mr. Ross’s unmistakable legs obstructed the view.
“He must smell something good down there,” the neighbor had said, his voice louder as he moved closer to retrieve his dog. “These hounds are bred for their sense of smell. Them sniffers are top-notch. He’s got his mind set on something in your cellar already. Probably got rats or something.”
“Ain’t we all?” Mr. Ross had had his company voice on. It was an airy tone that always made Bella think of the old westerns her mother had enjoyed. He used that white-hat cowboy voice whenever he answered the door or the phone—warm, inviting, and full of down-home humor. “I’ll have to borrow the little rascal one day, see if I can get him to flush them out for me.”
“That’s the least I can do to make up for your hospitality.”
There had been a sharp crack followed by a fizzing sound. Bella knew Mr. Ross had handed his neighbour the first of many beers he’d willingly take that afternoon.
He was there every Sunday like clockwork, drinking can after can of cheap beer while he waited for his wife to finish up with church and get his roast on the table. And every Sunday, like clockwork, the puppy rushed to her window and the smell of her that leaked from the basement like a weak SOS signal lost on the airwaves. Not this time though.
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