It went well, didn’t it? The murder? My hands and pants are somewhat bloody. In the moonlight, blood appears as a dark stain. I stare at the white front door to Hailey’s house and try to remember the recent events. The details are a little…fuzzy.
A light drizzle starts to fall, wetting my face.
If I knock and explain what happened, will she let me in? I suspect this was the plan I made, and it sucks so badly, I amaze myself.
I want to meet her. I need to. I need to figure out how I know her and who I am.
Am I animal, vegetable, mineral, or alien?
5
MONSTERS IN THE NIGHT
Frozen in place, with my stomach squeezing in on itself in fear, I watch as a huge stranger assaults a man at my rear door, takes a knife off him, then hauls him into the night. The moon lends enough light to paint them, but not enough to identify either. They disappear over the fence, one dragged by the other, leaving me shaking. I have no idea who the stranger is but thank fuck he intervened.
It takes me five, ten minutes, to recover, to weigh up my options with my back to the wall. I slink back inside the house, lantern in hand. I’m afraid to switch it on in case it attracts someone. After cursing at myself, I rustle up the courage and turn it on. It’s an old style one, its inadequate lighting reminding me of horror movies. The upstairs hall and stairway are bathed in precisely the sort of light that attracts things that go bump and claw you into closets so they can devour you, piece by piece.
Am I scaring myself?Yup. “Grow a backbone.”
I almost, but don’t, call the cops. The stranger might?Should I track him down? How, though? I don’t know his motives.
That visit is a heavy nail of hammered-in certainty telling me that I am on a kill list. Same as Dad.
Someone wants me dead.
Because I dared to come home? Just that? There must be more.
Calling the sheriff might endanger me. Revenant is miles from another town. Revenant seems tainted, reeking of villainy. Is it due to where Dad worked or something else? Cryonics and medical research always seemed nerdy without truly being dangerous.
I will leave you the house.It was an aberrant statement considering the rest of his alarming message.We used to play silly games here, games with clues.
Clues.I patter downstairs, lantern held high so I can see the steps and not slide down on my ass.
My father has been murdered. I need proof of that, and I need it tonight, then I can drive away and show it to someone who is not implicated. If the house doesn’t hold a clue, I should leave in the morning.
“I just need to survive the night,” I whisper, frowning at the hallway full of paper. “And get a gun?”
The piles are numerous, though mostly in his study and here. “The Fire Department would love this place.” I eye the stacks, toeing the nearest. “Have to start somewhere.”
Kraken cat has followed me and hangs around for a while, purring and head-butting my leg, then he wanders off and curls up on a blanket. Molly should have cat food. I’ll ask in the morning, before I leave, or whatever I choose to do.
Funny how I’m worried about the cat in the middle of this. I glance over at the furry critter and can’t help smiling.
As I kneel, the house seems to twist, vibrate, and distort, as if someone is playing with my balance mechanisms or the physics of the world. For ten, twenty seconds I am on all fours with my hands planted on the floor. The disconcerting sensation pulses, leaving a scintillating halo at the edges of my vision that fades away to nothing.
Gone? I check the ceiling, the walls, and even the cat looks unhappy. His big round eyes are dilated and dark. The house has stopped throbbing.
“We good? Was that…” I recheck my surrounds, recalling Molly’s crazy theory. “The Large Hadron Collider?”
Its construction happened after I left town. If that was it, no wonder she thinks aliens and zombies are coming for us.
“I take back everything bad I thought about you, Molly.” I dust off my hands, square my shoulders. Back to what is truly important.
Kneeling on the floor, I leaf through everything, pulling apart the piles and laying things aside as methodically as I can. Until I find…something.
This old photo album has sprigs of lavender pressed under the cover’s rotting plastic. Though dried and flattened, they’ve kept their purple color. I’m unsure of the significance but he used to grow it in the garden because I loved the pretty flowers. Did he want to draw my attention to this album?
A photo of Dad and Mom, with her cradling my baby brother, makes me stop turning the pages. There are notes beneath some of the photos. This writing seems different.
