ROMANCE: Mr. Mystery: (New Adult Bad Boy Romance) (Contemporary Mystery Short Stories) (21 page)

“I was on my way to check on my dad and I saw that police.”  Elizabeth merely stared at him. 

“But your father isn’t home.”  She motioned to the police officer.  “They checked.  There’s no one in his place.” 

They all saw the look on Rick’s face.  It was surprise, followed immediately by fear.  His eyes widened and he sighed. 

“Well, maybe he went out for a beer.”  He was suddenly smiling.  Elizabeth arched a brow.  She had never heard Rick mention that his father drank.  And from what she had observed, Philip was always in at night. 

“I…oh.  Ok.”  She nodded.  Her lips tried to form a believable smile.  But it wasn’t quite happening. 

Just a half hour earlier, she had seen an unidentifiable masked man standing outside of her window.  Then there were those eyes….those eyes which were so familiar.  Now Rick had appeared out of nowhere.  On the nights when Rick slept over, there were no mysterious sounds.  Rick had avoided telling her any real stories of the house’s supposed hauntings.  Was that because there were none?  Did Rick know more than he was letting on?  Elizabeth was suddenly horribly uncomfortable.  And she didn’t like the reason why. 

She was not in a good mood as she hung curtains the next morning.  She’d been up most of the night listening.  But of course, no sound had come.  She had figured that was what would happen.  

Maybe she was being paranoid, but it felt valid to her.  If it was Rick, if he was involved in all of this, had he decided not to risk his exposure a second time?  She hoped not.  She truly hoped not.  She wanted to believe in Rick.  She wanted to think that he was the good man she had come to know over the last few weeks.  But too many oddities were adding up. 

There was a soft knock on the door.  Elizabeth looked up to see Rick standing in the doorway.  She immediately felt herself tense. 

“Hey.”  He smiled at her.  “How are you today?” 

There wasn’t as much work to do lately, so the men were only coming when a specific task needed performed.  The electrician was coming tomorrow, so she wasn’t entirely sure why Rick had come today. 

“I…didn’t realize you were stopping over.”  She folded her arms over her chest.  Rick looked taken back. 

“I thought I’d stop by to check on you.”  He took a step forward.  His fingertips came to rest on her arm.  “I was worried about you after what happened last night.  Are you ok?” 

“I’m fine.”  Elizabeth pushed a handful of hair out of her eyes.  The conversation wasn’t making her feel much better.  She wanted him to leave so that she could keep thinking.  “Rick, I-.” 

“What?”  His fingertips were rubbing up and down her arm.  “Talk to me.  Tell me what you’re thinking?” 

“It’s just….”  She shrugged, not quite knowing how to say it.  “Where were you last night?” 

“Where was I?”  He echoed.  “Why do you ask?”

“Well it’s just that-.”  She didn’t finish. 

“Elizabeth, I told you I was on my way over to check on my dad.”  The look on his face told her that he knew why she was asking.   “Why?  Where did you think I was?” 

“Nothing ever happens when you’re here.”  She answered meekly.  Rick’s eyes flashed in understanding as his hand moved from her arm. 

“I see.”  He gave her a firm nod.  “If that’s the case, I’ll be heading off.  I….I guess I’ll see you tomorrow when the electrician shows up.” 

“Yeah.”  She nodded.  She felt terrible for suspecting him.  But this had gone on long enough, and she was more frightened than ever. 

“By the way,” Rick turned to face her, “do you really think I’d show up and out myself if I’d been lurking outside of your window last night?” 

Elizabeth lowered her head.  Rick set his jaw. 

“As I thought.  Bye, Elizabeth.”

She tried to go back to her own house and relax.  But after her conversation, she was too on edge.  She tried to fix tea, but decided that she was simply too keyed up.  Sighing, she trudged back over to the house for some more work. 

She hadn’t been there long when her phone rang.  The screen clearly declared that it was Rick.  Frowning, she swiped it open. 

“Rick, I-.” 

“No, Elizabeth, listen to me.”  He sounded upset.  Well, not so much upset as…worried.  “Elizabeth, I’m coming over.  There’s something that I need to tell you.” 

“Rick, I don’t think that’s such a good-.”  The line went dead.  Elizabeth sighed.  She didn’t realize that he would take her words so hard.  She would do everything she could to let him down gently.

It had not been long when Elizabeth clearly heard footsteps on the stairs.  Sighing, she turned. 

“Ok, Rick, let’s talk-.”  Her words broke off when she saw who stood in the doorway.  The masked man from the window stared back at her from behind his white mask.  Elizabeth took a step backwards.  A lamp clattered to the floor.  She didn’t exactly know where she was going-there was nowhere to run.  But she had to get away from him. 

“Rick…please.”  She whispered frantically.  “I’m sorry.” 

He ignored her.  He was moving slowly across the floor to her.  Elizabeth backed up as far as she could go.  Suddenly, she realized she could go no further.  Her back was literally against the wall. 

Rick was in front of her.  His body pressed hers into the wall.  She whimpered softly.  There wasn’t much else that she could do.  His hand moved up, closing around her throat.  Elizabeth felt the long fingers dig into her skin.  She could do nothing but make a weak squeaking sound.  She watched as her hands came up.  They tried to ply his fingers away, but it was no use. 

I’m going to die here
, she thought.  Had she come all this way to die? 

Suddenly there was a flash behind Rick.  Another Rick was behind him.  Wait, no… that was Rick. Her Rick.  He was grabbing the man holding her, throwing him to the floor.  Elizabeth shrank into a corner.  Her hand raised to her throat.  It was already sore and she was certain that she had bruises. 

Rick was holding the masked man down on the floor. 

“Elizabeth!  Call the police!”  She did not hesitate. 

Rick held the man down on the floor until the officers arrived.  Elizabeth gasped as she saw the mask pulled back. 

“Philip?”  She whispered.  Sure enough, it was Rick’s white haired father which the two officers were pulling to his feet.  “But why?” 

“That’s what I was on my way over to tell you.”  Rick got up.  “Something has been going on with my dad.  I just found it tonight.”               

He reached into his back pocket.  He held out a folded piece of paper.  Still trembling, Elizabeth took it.  She opened it and read the words. 

Philip,I am terribly sorry, but I have to reject your offer.  I understand the sentimental attachment to the property that you and your family would have, but it is mine.  I have owned it for many years now.  I hope this will not impact our friendship. 

Yours,

Thelma 

Elizabeth looked up at Rick.  “I don’t understand.” 

“I’m sure that you don’t.”  Rick nodded.  “I just found out myself.  Apparently my grandfather’s family built this house.  When your grandmother went into the senior complex, my dad offered to buy the property.  Of course Thelma said no.  She wanted you to have it.  But-.” 

“But your dad wasn’t ok with that.”  Elizabeth looked back at her grandmother’s signature. 

“No,” Rick sighed.  “He went off on a rant the other day which I didn’t understand.  Then Daniel and I started looking around-.” 

“Daniel…helped?”  Rick gave her a bit of a smile. 

“Daniel’s sorry if he freaked you out.  But he’s really a decent guy.”  Rick’s smile faded and his jaw tightened.  “My dad’s plan was apparently to frighten you out of the house, and then buy it himself.”  He looked apologetic.  “Elizabeth, I never had any idea-.” 

“I’m sorry.”  Elizabeth was still frightened, but she did feel bad for him.  “Your father needs help.” 

“That he does.”  Rick looked down the stairs.  He held out his hand for her.  “We should both go and have a talk with the officers.”  He ran his fingers over her neck.  “You’re bruised.  You should see a doctor.” 

“Later.”  Elizabeth took his hand.  “Come on.” 

It had been two weeks since the incident in the house.  Since that night, Elizabeth no longer saw or heard anything strange.  She’d offered to not press charges against Philip, but the local police were hearing none of it.  Philip had crossed the line between simply trespassing and causing harm.  While Elizabeth hadn’t been seriously hurt, she knew she’d never be able to get the incident out of her mind. 

Philip had confessed to everything.  While Elizabeth had thought he was a sweet old man, his statements were revealing a different personality.  He was bitter and angry with Thelma.  He claimed the two had an agreement over the years for her to sell him the house.  But then, suddenly, she’d supposedly changed her mind.

Philip was furious.  He’d done so much work on the property which he believed was rightfully his family’s, and now he’d have no claim to it.  When he’d heard that a single woman was moving into the property, he’d figured it would be incredibly easy to get her out of the house. 

He’d left the monkey doll the first night.  It was a family heirloom that Philip’s family claimed was cursed.  He’d thought it might send a message-given that it was so ugly. 

Elizabeth had proven better than he thought.  And then she’d become involved with Rick.  Elizabeth wondered if he’d watched them in bed.  She did not want to think of it. 

Rick and Daniel had both been incredibly apologetic over their father’s actions.  As strange as Daniel had originally been, he had become just as pleasant now.  Elizabeth had even agreed to let him move into the caretaker’s house.  He’d now be her neighbor. 

Rick did not need to move in with him.  He was still spending his time with her.  She could not blame him for his father’s actions.  She’d told him that-in many ways. 

It had been a rough start, but Canver had been just what she’d needed.  She could only imagine the future she had ahead of her. 

THE END

Castor hadn't really thought about what it meant at the time. He saw her sink against the crumbling cement wall, muffled noises breathed into her hands in short bursts as she struggled not to cry, and all he could think was that he felt something. Unidentifiable, but it existed and that was all that concerned him.

She had been coming and going for the past several nights without

ever indicating she was aware of his presence. He was cautious at first, staying on the floor above and only listening to her movements throughout the warehouse. She would snap photographs in each room, shuffling through fallen cables and deserted canisters and parts, often stopping for a cigarette.

She made comments aloud occasionally, and this is what had initially piqued Castor's interest. He had stayed hidden in the warehouse for the better part of a year, tucked away behind large panels of drywall he himself had used to carve out a small but comfortable room, concealed practically in plain sight should anyone happen to wander that far into the decrepit building. Squatters had come and gone, but the building had developed a certain reputation with the junkies and the gutter punks after the first few bodies had been found out on the ninth-floor landing. He hadn't seen anyone in months.

Her voice was clear, ringing out beautifully through Castor's lonely cement palace. "What the hell am I doing?"

She sighed, slowly sliding down the wall, every motion and breath reverberating infinitely in his heightened perception of sound. And that's when it started. That's when Castor wasn't content to stay upstairs only listening anymore. He moved light and easily down to the eighth floor, practiced enough to know she wouldn't detect the slightest disturbance. In life, he'd been rather conspicuous, features strange and alien and uncomfortably noticeable for someone with his temperament.

One of the only things he relished after the change was the impossible stillness he'd managed—the inherent slyness of wretched things like him. He watched her from behind the broken slat of a door. Her face was unassuming but fresh and sad and everything he thought he might miss about before.

She returned every evening, sometimes taking photographs, sometimes only flipping through a book by the light of a small gas lamp probably meant for camping. She brought a sleeping bag a few evenings, rolled it out and sometimes cried herself to sleep. Castor sat nearby for all of it—sometimes moving around and with her as a shadow, mimicking the stretch of her arm as she reached for her camera, the directionless pacing from room to room, her huddled position against the wall as she was overwhelmed again by whatever exhaustion seemed to plague her.

It was the most interaction he had had with a human in years. He imagined briefly that some tiny mechanism inside him had clicked and moved, was building the desire and speed to work. Ana's presence in his home upon waking every night over the last two weeks had given him connection and interest—the will to exist.

Somehow the scent of her blood was never a problem, greatly overshadowed as it was by his growing curiosity in what had brought her here and what had made her so sad. There were plenty of stragglers, drunks and addicts on the streets nearby for that. Though Castor didn't waste time with guilt anymore—his moral compass had shifted slightly askew out of necessity some long and resounding time ago—it seemed unfeasible to him to think of her as anything other than his unwitting and inviolable companion.

And perhaps it could've gone on that way forever. At least another week or two. But Castor's impatience, his desire to be nearer to her all the time, came with consequences.

******

The ocean was a haunt. Waves whispering over the pebbled shore and roaring back out. Years passed, and that remained. The lazy, static metronome of waves ghosted into her life endlessly, no matter how she tried to escape them. She had become the still point, the center of a clock, as life moved long and short around her. Sitting on the rocks beneath the overhang of her small acre lot, she watched the water edge closer to her bare feet, salt spray dampening her jeans, stealing herself to finally enter the house she'd spent the better part of her early adulthood avoiding.

Ana had come home with two bags and a cardboard box of books, and that was it that was her entire life, packed squarely away in three containers. Opening the door to the cottage was like prying back the lid from a coffin, dust glowing thick under the pale stream of daylight that etched its way through the stale air. She hadn't stepped foot on the pearled mosaic tiles of her family home in ten years, and yet somehow she couldn't seem to feel it mattered.

It was as if no time had been lost to her, but rather preserved here in this space, undisturbed in her absence. The same simple wooden chairs and table remained in the kitchen, the same worn leather couch hugged the left wall of the open space, and the same white lace curtains her mother had made hung still and untouched across the large, back bay windows.

She walked down the narrow hallway, pausing outside the paint-chipped door of what was once her parents' room. Hand on the doorknob, Ana turned it softly to the left but found herself incapable of pushing it open. She clicked the lock back, the sound sharp and loud in the stillness of her surroundings.

Moving a bit further down the hall and to the right, she shoved open the door to her childhood room and dumped her bags inside. The walls were still the same soft yellow of youth and innocence, the bed and desk smaller, more quaint than she remembered. Opening the window took some effort, but once it unstuck the rush and damp of the ocean filled the space with an almost crippling nostalgia.

"Hello...Ana? Is that you?"

Ana jumped back at the sound, a small jolt of fear—overwhelmingly familiar to her recently—had her clutching her hand to her chest. She spun around to find Laura standing just outside the bedroom door.

"Oh, I'm sorry! I didn't mean to scare you..." Laura's eyes were wide, assessing Ana with an unfamiliarity that bordered on surreal.

Ana waved her apology away, swallowing back the rush of adrenaline. "No, no it's ok. I'm just...just a little jumpy lately is all."

Laura seemed to nod in understanding, though Ana knew she could have no real knowledge why.

Laura looked at her sympathetically, head slightly bowed as though talking to a small child. "It must be strange for you, being back here."

It was true enough. Ana nodded, made a sound of agreement. "It is a bit. Yeah."

"Jesus, look at you," Laura said with an insincere edge to her voice. "You look great."

Laura and Ana had been neighbors as children, best friends by junior high, and something in between by their teens. They had largely ignored one another's existence until the death of Ana's father and, soon after, her mother. Ana had left their hometown straight out of high school, traveling and writing and photographing the world over to make a buck here and there.

Laura had never left, and it fell on she and her mother to check in on the house from time to time, though Ana had never asked them to. Two months prior, just after her mother's funeral, Ana had fled again, intending to stay gone for good. She didn't have the presence of mind—the emotional energy—to deal with the house and the money just then.

But here she was again, life having that strange and circular way of pulling her back into the things she most feared. Only this time, the reasons had been far beyond the scope of reality. She shivered at the thought—traumatic flashes of the jet black of his hair, the intense pallor of his bare feet, the sickening thud as he hit the ground below.

"How long are you staying this time?" Ana stifled the urge to jump again at the interruption.

She swallowed and smiled in a tired way. "Not sure. Awhile, I think."

Laura's somber expression didn't escape her notice.
 

******

At one time in her life, if Ana could have scorched a single person's presence from her memory, it would have been Vincent's. He was broad and handsome, and just a little rough around the edges, and the always slight glint of bat shit crazy in his eye had ruled and ruined her heart for more years than it should have. He was the reason Laura and she had an unspoken yet understood fallout during their teens, and he was definitely the reason Laura still felt bitter toward her now.

She had orbited around the great big shining sun that was his grin, and swallowed up his every careless compliment and lazy gesture of affection. Then one day, for no clear reason she could have surmised at the time, Vincent became impatient and bored with their interactions. While he had always been close enough to intoxicate and just distant enough to confuse and entice her further, Ana had been rooted in a firm position of inaction, afraid to be too much or not enough. In her mind, stillness was the safest option for the both of them. And it had cost her his attention. The day he strolled into their favorite diner with Laura on his arm, Ana began to die by inches until she had been shriveled to nothing.

If Ana had known then what she knew now, age and experience having gifted her an unfortunate wealth of wisdom, she would've seen through the bullshit. But she'd always been slow to the punch.

Ana took a deep breath and swung back the door to the market, the sharp tang of fish and sea stinging her nostrils. There was a young boy, hair like a mop and patchy pink cheeks, standing just behind the counter unsuccessfully flirting with a gangly blonde girl. They were apparently left to run the small and unassuming restaurant while strong-armed men stood several feet away behind a half wall of pine, sorting fish and oysters and things Ana didn't really understand or have the desire to eat for that matter.

She heard him before she saw him. Voice booming and amiable with the slightest affectation she had never been able to identify. He walked swiftly from the market and into the restaurant, hand scruffing the back of his head as the other pointed out something the teenagers were meant to be doing.

He glanced quickly toward the door, still mumbling disapproval when he stopped firmly in his tracks and looked back toward the door. Back at Ana.

She gave a small wave. "Heard I'd find you here."

She wasn't sure what reaction she expected out of him, but the look of devastation, slowly turning into something close to awe as he approached her, certainly hadn't been it.

"Thought I'd just seen a ghost..." Vincent said, barely audible.

This was a terrible idea. "Surprise..."

He shifted uncomfortably. "Indeed it is."
 

******

He'd just wanted to take in her scent, view the faint lines on her face, study the way she looked out into the bleak and crumbling landscape. He wanted to see what she saw, feel whatever it was she felt. He couldn't much help it, his feet moved of their own volition.

She was crouched a bit, tripod precariously positioned on the edge of what was once the cement landing for the fire escape, transformed some time ago into a gaping hole in the side of the building. She was trying to get a long exposure shot of the city skyline, at least he assumed so, the way she kept adjusting and looking back, camera pointed out into the dark. Castor wondered what might happen if he suddenly spoke up, said, "Don't you think that might be a little cheesy? Boring, even?" He had been doing that a lot—tossing around absurd hypotheticals, even occasionally imagining full and easy conversations with her.

Instead he only stepped closer to her, performing a long and nearly pointless dance in her shadow. Crouch, bend, lean forward, lean back, stand straight. He moved as she moved with almost no thought, her actions anticipated, flowing and smooth for him. Until she dropped the ring. It made a high, thin ting on the cement as it bounced just out of her grasp. She ducked to recover it and it took Castor an impossibly long second to realize his mistake. He'd lunged forward for the ring, but remained standing.

He could almost feel her pulse quicken, a drum beat against him. He hadn't had time to think of the why—all he knew was that he did not move, and Ana had spun toward him, tumbling back in a vacuous silence as she took in his bare feet, two legs that had seemingly appeared from nowhere, standing stock still mere inches from her. She choked on the air, legs and arms shooting out in a desperate and automated response.

He somehow fumbled toward her—to gather the ring, to calm her, or kill her, he didn't have the slightest idea. And then he was pitching forward into the black, the night as noiseless as he could ever remember it, smacking some eighty odd feet into the ground hard enough to knock him momentarily unconscious.