by Abe Moss
She began picking at the tissue again.
“It’s not about just anybody believing me,” she corrected her therapist. “I only wish my parents did.”
“I’m sure your parents only want to know you’re doing well. That you’re safe. That you’re happy.”
“Of course I’m not happy…”
Her therapist nodded, considering. “How would you say they’re handling it? What with it almost being a year since it happened…”
“I don’t know,” Maria answered shortly. “I don’t know how they’re handling it. I’m just… trying to handle it myself. They have each other, anyway. I’m sure they’re doing okay…”
“What about you? Who do you have?”
To avoid having a discussion about it, and the guilt she’d likely feel shortly thereafter, Maria refrained from telling her therapist she’d already declined her parents’ invitation to come home for the upcoming break. A simple text was all it took.
Not coming home for spring break. I have plans with friends. Sorry. Love you.
A simple lie.
Maria shook her head. “I have myself, and that’s all I really want right now.”
✽ ✽ ✽
Aside from the low whispers of her fellow students, the classroom was rather subdued as they waited for their professor, running late. Maria opened up her laptop, browsing forums and her email as she waited. While she did, her phone buzzed in her pocket. Lately, this sensation could just as likely fill her with dread as it could fill her with hope. Was it her parents? Her mother? Or could it be…
To her private delight, it was Jessup. She peered secretively around at her classmates, as though anyone would have any interest in reading over her shoulder. It was only one message. Smiling internally, she opened their conversation and read it over many times.
Do you like Chinese?
She read it a few times more. She skimmed their previous messages as well. Not many. She frowned, reading them now, realizing just how flat she came across in her side of the conversation. Like cardboard. If she kept it up, he’d think she wasn’t interested. Except…
Was she?
She wondered if it was fair of her to entertain the idea at all. To string Jessup along, when she hadn’t a clue what she wanted. If she wanted. And even if she did…
Who wants baggage like mine?
She stuffed her phone back into her pocket without any response at all.
✽ ✽ ✽
But Jesus Christ, if he wasn’t persistent…
“Maria!”
It was a windy morning as Maria pushed through the double-doors outside after class, ducking her head as her hair blew messily across her face in the cold gust. She almost didn’t hear his voice over the sound of the wind in her ears. Just a voice, calling something that sounded like her name…
“Maria!”
She gripped the straps of her backpack. She glanced up, eyes obscured by her hair, searching the yard for the source.
And there he was. She spotted him jogging toward her and her insides went wild with insect wings. Terror and excitement all entwined. She pulled her hair out of her face and tried her best to smile. Her eyes watered against the chilly breeze. Painful.
“Hey,” Jessup said, slowing as he came to walk beside her.
“Hey.”
“Did you get my text earlier?”
Was he always this clingy, she wondered? It was like whiplash, how quickly she went from one end of the spectrum to the other—the spectrum being her level of fondness for him.
“How did you know where my class was?” she asked. “Are you following me?”
His mouth formed a horrified ‘O’.
“Well, I…” He hesitated. He pulled his phone out and she saw his hands were shaking. “We texted a little since Saturday, and…”
Suddenly she felt entirely stupid. She blushed, and was grateful to have her hair blow stubbornly across her face to hide it, even if she looked all the more silly pulling it out of her mouth as she spoke.
“We talked about classes on Sunday,” she said, remembering. “I totally forgot…”
He was still scrolling frantically through his phone to locate the texts in question, desperate to redeem himself. Desperate to prove he wasn’t some kind of stalker.
“Sorry,” Maria said. “It’s okay. I remember now.”
She gestured for him to put his phone away. At least they were embarrassed together.
Except, what he said next stopped her completely.
“Am I making a fool of myself?” They stood together on the walkway, the wind chasing around them like busy ghosts. “I know I’m not the most subtle, and I can be really dense sometimes. I’ve been told that a lot, actually. I just want to make sure—because I’m not very good at taking hints—am I making you uncomfortable?”
“No,” Maria said. It was a bit of a lie, but not a cruel one. Only technically a lie…
“If I’m way off the mark and… and you’re not interested at all, that’s completely fine, of course. I just want to make sure so I don’t embarrass myself.” He laughed nervously. “More than I have, I mean…”
“You don’t make me uncomfortable,” she said. She sighed, guilty for getting so ahead of herself with assumptions. “And I actually really like Chinese. I’d love to go out for some with you sometime.”
He smiled, handsome with his rosy, wind-bitten cheeks.
“You would?”
“I think that sounds fun…” Her dry eyes welled up with tears she hoped he didn’t mistake for something else. “I was going to respond to your text, but I just…”
“I swear I’m not some obsessed freak with boundary issues,” he said. “My class is just in the next building there…” He pointed across the yard, from the direction he’d been running from. “I texted you originally, and I wasn’t impatient for an answer or anything, I just… We were so close, I figured why not just ask in person, if I could…”
Maria laughed, forgetting for a moment how unusually cold it was for a day in March.
“When would you like to get Chinese?” she asked.
✽ ✽ ✽
They decided on Thursday night. Somehow, Jessup convinced Maria to agree to bowling after dinner as well, if she felt up to it at the time. Being that it was currently Tuesday, Maria realized that would give her almost two full days to needlessly worry about everything. She wondered, though, if that was enough time?
Work that evening would prove a worthwhile distraction, at least for a few hours. Evenings were busiest, and she found herself in the trenches of an unusually busy evening at the buffet, made all the more stressful by her own distracted thoughtlessness.
A group of fifteen was sat in her section. Six of them children under the age of seven.
“I’m jealous,” her coworker told her in the back, referring to the tip she might get from such a large table.
Maria spent the next hour doing her best to keep up with the endlessly piling dishes and spilled drinks. She brought a new glass of water for one of the children, and offered straws to the rest which the parents accepted gratefully. Later, when collecting yet more dishes, she watched as one of the children stuck their straw into the untouched food on their plate and then blew the food into their drink. She visibly shuddered as she retreated back to the kitchen.
“Cold?” her coworker asked.
From out on the floor there came a crash, the sound of plates and silverware alike falling to the floor, shortly followed by the disappointed sighs of a mother and father.
“Bet your super jealous now, aren’t you?” Maria said, turning on her heel and putting on a phony grin for all to see and appreciate.
✽ ✽ ✽
As soon as her table of fifteen was gone—they left an incredibly generous five-dollar tip—Maria begged for someone to cover her section for a few minutes to allow her a breather.
“You doing okay?” Sharon asked as Maria passed her in the kitchen. “You look worried.”
/> “Huh? Oh, no,” Maria lied. “I’m fine. But thanks…”
She stepped outside. The back door closed with a heavy slam and the restaurant’s ambience died behind it. The stack of drink crates had been moved or taken, so Maria simply leaned against the building, hugging herself under the cold night sky with her brightly lit phone in her hand.
You working? Jessup had messaged half an hour prior.
Yeah, on break now, she replied.
Her breath was a soft white vapor in the dark.
A noise overhead drew her attention. A flap of air, a rustle of wings. Maria glanced up as a bird took flight from the roof above her head. Just a dark shadow against the night sky, she watched it glide soundlessly away, until it landed on the neighboring building across the parking lot from the buffet. There the bird sat. A feathered oval of black, perched in secret. It swiveled its head, and its big round eyes caught the light of the parking lot lamppost, lit them up glimmering and gold. Still and watching.
Thoroughly distracted, Maria stared at the owl for an unknown amount of time, thoughts drifting vaguely as she watched it watching her. Was it watching her?
Her phone buzzed in her hand. Jessup again.
When she glanced up, the shadow on the roof was gone.
✽ ✽ ✽
Wednesday came and went without a fuss, mostly. However, as the day transpired, Maria found herself growing increasingly anxious. What about, she couldn’t quite tell. There were so many possible things when she tried to pinpoint it.
There was her upcoming date with Jessup the following evening. Each time she remembered, her stomach somersaulted. She thought endlessly about her parents, about her therapy sessions, and was racked with guilt that she wasn’t being entirely truthful with anyone.
And then there were the skeletons in the closet. The ghost in the corner. He’d been appearing more frequently these days, leading up to the anniversary of what happened, and Maria struggled lying to herself about that anymore. When it first started, she’d tried telling herself it must be like they said. Everything had been some kind of hallucination, and she was simply still having them. But then that hallucination began to speak. And the things it said—he said—were beyond that of any mere hallucination.
The things Harvey told her would come true.
✽ ✽ ✽
In the deepest part of the night, when no soul should stir, Maria lay in a thick sweat. She tossed and turned, tearing her sheets back and forth across herself in her thrashing, as a shadowed figure watched quietly in the dark.
She dreamed. Not just dreams, but nightmares. And not just nightmares, either, but memories. Memories worse than anything any nightmare could thrust upon her. Omens. Things which might come to pass, and that scared her most of all. The thought that it might not be over… that the worst of it was just begun…
There was daylight in her dream. At the start.
She walked a cemetery beneath a midday sun. She was alone but unafraid. She knew why she was there, what she was looking for. It was only a matter of finding it. Which was difficult, because there were just so many of them, rows of them in all directions. She swept between them, touching their warm stone with her fingers and her eyes, searching the epitaphs for one in particular.
“Maria…”
A child’s voice. It was his voice. Michael’s voice. The mere sound of it, even in a dream, started her crying. She felt the tears down her face, warm and smothering. As she continued through the headstones, she wondered vaguely to herself—
—am I crying in my sleep?—
—and that was when she heard it again. And the dream began to change.
“Maria!”
There were clouds on the horizon. They rolled in thick—brown and full of dust from the desert hills. The sun sunk into the clouds, swallowed up like a figure into fog. The cemetery fell into gloom. As Maria watched the curtain of shadow draw over the tombstones, she noticed their epitaphs blurring until they were unreadable. Not words at all. Wiped into nothing she understood. Something else. A language of another kind.
“Maria!”
She turned toward the voice, suddenly beside her, and found an open grave. Cleanly dug. She stepped toward it, and every fiber of her being tensed with a knowledge of something not right. Somewhere in the confines of her waking mind, she knew what this was—a dream, a spell—and she urged herself to wake from it. Instead, she stepped closer to the open grave, to the mound of loose dirt piled beside it.
Something appeared out of the clouds overhead. It swooped toward her and she ducked beneath it. Its wings unfurled gracefully on either side as it came to land on the headstone of the freshly dug grave. An owl. It settled atop the stone in a stooping of feathers. Its head swiveled eerily toward her, eyes aglow with sunlight which was no longer in the sky.
“Maria!”
She stood at the edge of the grave. She peered into it, the darkness inside calling to her, and suddenly everything seemed to turn sideways.
“Maria!”
The grave was bottomless. Leaning over the opening, staring into its endlessness, she felt a dizziness come over her. And then another voice spoke.
“It’s what you want.”
She tore her eyes away from the abyss and focused on the owl, perched on the headstone with its beacon-bright eyes. Entrancing.
“It’s what you want,” the owl repeated. “You should have what you want.”
Maria looked to the hole once more. The deep black within was deeper now, deeper than bottomless if such a thing could ever be true. There was something there now. Something peering back.
“Have it,” the owl said. “Have it and it shall have you.”
In the black depths of the grave, the moon shined round and cratered and hauntingly beautiful.
“HAVE IT.”
All at once the darkness rushed to meet her. Maria screamed. Her stomach ached with the freefall. She turned her eyes above as she plummeted into the darkness and saw the square of light at the top—the opening of the grave—growing smaller and smaller, until it was nothing more than a single star in the black sky. Below, in the stretching void—a never-ending tunnel—the moon grew larger and larger still. Massive and—
—as if through a telescope—
“Maria!”
She squinted her eyes and saw him. He was there. Michael. Standing upon the moon. She squinted harder and made out the waving of his arm. All the smiling teeth in his mouth. Getting closer. Larger. As she fell farther. Faster.
“Michael?” Her voice came as a dry whisper. It was difficult to speak at the speed she was traveling. Her stomach did cartwheels, the feeling of plunging straight down on a rollercoaster. The wind taken from her lungs, never letting up. “Michael…”
And then the moon rotated. The dark side turning to face her. That surreal, drenching fear seized her as she continued falling toward it, end over end like a baton through dream-space and dream-time, and she screamed inside her own mind to wake up. She watched as Michael’s waving figure disappeared around the curve of the glowing rock, and all she was left with was…
“Maria!”
The dark side of the moon wasn’t dark at all. It shined blindingly bright, like an owl’s eye. A glimmering mirror. She glimpsed herself against its surface, her freakishly elongated face screaming as it pulled her closer into its orbit. And other faces as well. Looking back.
Three faces. Three hideous faces.
“There you are, pretty girl.”
She did all she could to steer clear of them. She looked behind her once more, to the opening of the grave. But it was too far. They cackled within the moon, their yellow eyes fastened to her, drawing her in with their voices like chains around her wrists. The words from their mouths like the etchings on those tombstones. Inhuman. Something else… something wicked…
“Such a pretty girl…”
Maria closed her eyes against them. A last resort. She couldn’t bear to see them any closer. To face them. She felt the
ir skeletal fingers reaching through the void of space toward her, hungry as the moon. And somewhere in the vast darkness, behind the sounds of their whispering and gnashing mouths…
The cries of a child.
✽ ✽ ✽
Maria sprung upright in a wide-eyed, feverish panic. Her clawing hands found the blankets pooled at her sides and she clutched them to her. She searched the darkness all around her, the faint moonlight shining behind her bedroom curtains. As she gradually collected her wits and remembered where she was—that she was awake—she looked to the window, expecting to see exactly what she saw there.
The dark figure stood as it always did, watching and waiting.
“They know, don’t they?” she said to the apparition. She spasmed with fear as she spoke. “They—they know where I am?”
The figure did not budge. Did not fidget. For the first time, she felt not at all afraid of it. He was there not only to ask for help, but to help. She understood this now. Crazy as it seemed. Crazy as she must seem…
“They’re coming,” Harvey said.
Maria stared at the knotted sheets in her lap, damp with midnight terror. She sniffed, thinking silently. After a time, she lay back, and felt a strange calm come over her. A release.
Acceptance.
“How long do I have?” The room was terribly silent, and after waiting for an answer she turned toward the window where the figure still kept watch. “Harvey?”
“I don’t know,” he said.
Studying the ceiling in the dark, Maria sighed.
These weren’t the spring break plans she’d hoped for.
CHAPTER TEN
DATE NIGHT
Wow, he’s really going all out, isn’t he?” Dolly said, watching through the window as Jessup arrived the following evening.
Maria looked over her shoulder to see what she meant, and glimpsed Jessup coming up the walkway toward their building. He held flowers to his chest.
