Red Heather

by Aly Noble

  “Order up,” Jill said, blessedly interrupting my thoughts. “Anything else, sweetie?”

  “No, thank you,” I said, taking a deep drink of my beer. It had puddled at the base with condensation in the handful of minutes I’d neglected it, small wet pieces of napkin coming up with the glass.

  Jill nodded and walked away to chat up another customer who had come in and taken a seat nearby. I cut my burger in half and tried to lapse into one of the mindfulness exercises Mom had sent me a few weeks ago. When that didn’t work, I couldn't exactly say I was surprised—however, one bite of my food and I felt like the world might be right again, at least for the moment.

  “How we doin’?” Jill asked when she walked by again.

  She smirked when I angled my hand to wipe a drop of juice from my chin, trying to not look like an animal when I answered her. Dignity back intact, I replied, “Best burger I’ve ever had.”

  “Hear that, Jeff?” Jill called, puffing out her chest with pride. “Best burger she’s ever had.”

  “Between that and the beer, we must be your new favorite people,” Jeff chuckled, wiping down the bar.

  “Absolutely,” I said reverently, causing them both to laugh. After double-checking that I had everything I needed, Jill headed back to the kitchen.

  When she stepped out of my line of sight, I caught a glimpse of the other customer in the bar. Initially, I didn’t care, but something in me said I recognized him. I took another quick glance and when I couldn’t place him, I figured I’d walked past him at the store or something. Maybe he’d even been here when I’d stopped in for a beer before. Curiosity ebbing, I ate my meal—truffle fries switched definitions from “unknown” to “amazing” in my book—and enjoyed my drink with a few minutes of peace.

  Something, however, pulled my eyes back to the man again and I took a studiously longer look this time. He was tall and appeared a bit lanky, and was wearing a long brown coat that folded under him on the booth bench. His hair fell just past his cheekbones, was parted on the right side, and mingled brown and gray in defined locks with a slight wave. When he looked up at Jeff, I noted a pointed nose, thin lips, and an angular jaw with a chin that jutted some in not an unpleasant way. His age was difficult to ballpark and his eyes were a gentle shade of blue.

  He looked over at me right then and our eyes met accidentally, but he held about as much recognition for me as I felt for him. Awkward. Seeming unsure of what else to do, he nodded my way. I nodded back and returned to my meal, a little embarrassed.

  Head-wound throbbing, I paid my tab and tipped as generously as I could before I left the bar and went home.

  • • •

  As I was walking toward Red Heather Road, I cast a glance down the next street over at the closest people I had to neighbors. When I did, I spotted the Roberts’ little blue house and thought about Rose’s wary looks back in the hospital.

  A sigh eased from my chest—some second impression.

  An impulse flared in me to repair things with her somehow, despite her really only being an acquaintance whose opinion shouldn’t have mattered much to me yet. I took a moment for some introspection and decided it may be because she reminded me of my mother, who I rarely got to see anymore. Who rarely even called anymore and yet who I heard more from than I did from my dad or my brother.

  When the horrors of the past few weeks had begun and continued, I’d never even considered calling them. In fact, I’d far from considered it. I’d rejected the possibility. The last thing I needed was for them to think that I needed “help.” Like Graham, they would assume that I was projecting emotion into the solitude I’d crafted for myself. Making something out of nothing for the thrill of it.

  I gritted my teeth at the thought and glanced toward Rose and Steve’s house again. This time, I noticed Bethaline playing in the front yard, her parents once again nowhere to be found. I tried to just walk by, but I couldn’t not say “hi” to her and ended up in the driveway instead. “Hey, neighbor.”

  Bethaline looked up, shimmery eyes blinking widely in a way that had likely inspired the age of children painted as cherubs. I noticed for the first time that hers were a striking shade of steely gray, like pure mercury woven into the grid of an iris. Everything about her was striking and I desperately hoped that she held onto that, welcomed that, as she grew up. “Hi!”

  I smiled and sat down in the grass across from her. “How are you today?”

  “Good,” Bethaline said as she marched a Barbie through the grass, the doll’s stiletto-molded feet making pockmarks in the soft ground. “Mommy ran inside to change Axil.” She leaned forward conspiratorially. “He doesn’t use the potty.”

  I had to focus on not laughing. “He will. We all started out off the potty.”

  “Even me?” she asked, aghast.

  I lost my pokerface and cracked a smirk. “Even you. At least I’m assuming so. You’d have to ask your mom for the full story.”

  “Dooey noted,” she said seriously as she continued walking her doll.

  “Duly noted?” I offered instead.

  She considered that and then nodded once. “Duly.”

  “Oh, hi, Miri,” came Rose’s voice from the mouth of the garage. “How are you doing? You in general, but specifically your head.”

  “I’m getting there. Headaches abound.”

  “Have you been sleeping?”

  “Artificially.”

  “Yeah, I can tell,” she said, making a small tsk sound behind her teeth as she checked out a few fresh bruises on my forearms. “Migraine headaches?”

  “Today. Well, not a migraine, but bad. Otherwise, my scalp just hurts or it’s a dull headache.”

  “Considering what happened, that’s not too bad,” she said thoughtfully and angled the baby in her arms toward me. “Do you mind holding him? I’ll check your head while you’re here.”

  I took Axil from her and she set to work examining my bruised forehead before stepping behind me to inspect the back of my skull. I briefly considered asking how she thought my hair had been ripped clean off my head if I’d really just swerved away from some animal, but figured she’d just blame it on the hair getting stuck in my headrest or something to that non-suspicious effect. “You’re healing up well. I’m glad you didn’t get a concussion. That would’ve made things rough on you, especially since you live alone.”

  “Probably would’ve been an ugly hospital bill, too,” I added.

  “It’ll be an ugly hospital bill regardless,” she sighed. “But that’s the world we live in.” She took Axil back and kissed his head gently before sniffing the air in bewilderment. “Do you smell bacon?”

  “It’s probably me,” I admitted. “I had a burger down at Jill’s.”

  “Oh, one of the bacon burgers,” she groaned with hungerlust. “Those are so good. I haven’t had one of those for… Well, too long.”

  “Next time I go, you guys should come with. We’ll make an outing out of it,” I suggested.

  “That’d be fun!” Rose said enthusiastically before giving me a wink. “I’ll drive though.”

  “Oh, she’s got jokes, too,” I laughed.

  Rose smirked, looking down as Axil started to fuss. “He’s probably hungry, too. In case you head out before I’m back, I’ll see you around and take care. Do you have a pen and paper on you?” I looked in my purse and found an old hotel pad and a pink pen I'd likely swiped from my mom. She wrote something down and handed it back to me. “That’s my cell number. If your head gets worse or you want to go to Jill’s—very different points on the situational spectrum—shoot me a text or call.”

  I tucked the paper in my pocket. “Got it. Thanks, Rose.”

  With a nod, Rose went inside before Axil could start crying and I looked down at Bethaline as she watched her mom head back into the house.

  She looked to me once the door to the garage closed. “Are you going home?”

  “In a few minutes, once your mom comes back,” I decided, tugging at
a few green blades of grass near my shoes.

  “Oh, good. Can you hold Vanessa while I set up her picnic?” she asked, holding the doll out to me.

  I took the toy gingerly. “Sure.” I glanced over the well-tended Barbie doll while she placed a plastic picnic table and started removing accessories from a tin lunchbox near her hip. My next thought surfaced like a barely muted shock, but I internalized my reaction to it. I glanced toward the garage before asking, “So, your friend lives in my house?”

  Bethaline stopped what she was doing and glanced at me as if weighing the worth of responding to my admittedly leading question.

  “Jonah?” I specified.

  Her sparkly eyes lit up and she continued working on Vanessa’s picnic. “Yes!”

  “Has he lived there a long time?”

  “I think so. Since just after I was born is what he said.”

  I fixed the doll’s dress while we talked, reminding myself to take her imaginary friend with a grain of salt until he was deemed otherwise. “Did you meet him up at the house or did he come to see you?”

  “I was playing by the river and he came to say ‘hi.’ He comes and sits with me sometimes when I play there, but not as much anymore,” she said thoughtfully, holding her hands out for her doll once she was done with the plastic table arrangements.

  She started to play again and I was worried she was finished with our conversation. I thought about my next question to make it count in case she was. “Is Jonah nice to you?”

  Bethaline nodded. “He’s quiet. But he’s always careful when we play with my dollies. Daddy broke one once and we had to put her arm in a cast.”

  I smiled in spite of the topic. I reflexively attributed the story to her interpretation of an imaginary friend again and then berated myself—I couldn’t believe I was still hanging onto that logic after the things I’d been seeing. “Why doesn’t he come to play with you anymore?” I asked.

  She shrugged. “He does sometimes, just not as much. He’s with you a lot.”

  My blood iced over. “He is?”

  Bethaline nodded, looking at me as if I were oblivious. “I guess adults can’t see him like I do. I don’t think Mommy and Daddy think he’s real. I'm also not allowed to play by the river anymore.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “Mommy didn't like all the treasures I brought home.”

  I was careful with my questions now, trying to pick good ones while also wording them in a way that wouldn’t upset or confuse her. “Does Jonah like me?” I was wary of hearing the answer to this one, especially since I felt like I already knew it.

  She thought that over. “I think so. He laughs at your jokes.”

  This is so creepy. “What else does he do?”

  Bethaline shrugged. “He likes to watch people.”

  “Is he here right now?” I asked, feeling my stomach give a little lurch.

  She shook her head without looking up from her picnic. “No. He can only go outside for so long sometimes and can't go past the river. He said he’ll fade away if he does.”

  A car pulled into the driveway then and Steve got out after cutting the engine, smiling at his daughter. “Hi, Bethy. How are you doing, Miri?”

  “I’m fine, thanks. Just hanging out here until Rose comes back out,” I said, hoping my tone didn’t betray my unease.

  He nodded with his easygoing dentist smile and plucked a bag of takeout from the passenger seat. “Dinner has arrived. Go on inside, Bethaline,” he said, frowning a bit at the bag. “I’d invite you to eat with us, Miri, but I didn’t buy enough food.”

  “Oh, no, that’s all right,” I said quickly. “I appreciate that though. I’ll head out.”

  He smiled and waved before going inside ahead of his daughter, who was cleaning up her toys. I stuck around to help her put them back into the metal lunchbox and had just closed the container when I remembered the file in my purse. “Hey, Bethaline?”

  She looked at me curiously. “Yeah?”

  I dug the file out and found the packet of witness testimonies, flipping the alien page to the sketch of the face I’d seen in the mirror. I wordlessly turned the drawing toward her, wanting to gauge her reaction to the image without any lead. I almost hoped she’d look back up at me in total confusion and ask who it was drawn on the page.

  However, her steely gray eyes dropped to the page and widened before quickly moving back up to mine. “So you can see him!”

  Chapter 9

  I went home that evening to an empty house and a package in the mailbox. It was the next installment of Pilot Patch and I’d never been more happy to see work falling into my lap.

  Immediately, I took it to the dining room table—avoiding the camera sensor along the way like a lab rat on a shock grid—and settled into a chair to start reading with my sketchbook within reach. I was a quarter of the way through reading Patch’s latest airship excursion when the lights flickered. I glanced up and had just begun to wonder if I’d imagined it before there was a noticeable flicker again.

  I listened—it wasn’t raining. There was no rational reason—that I was aware of—that the power would be having trouble. Maybe a storm was on its way. Or maybe a power line was being worked on nearby. The lights remained bright long enough that I felt it safe to go back to the unbound manuscript. I’d made it through two more paragraphs before the lights buzzed and dimmed again, elastically snapping back into brightness.

  I set down my pencil and the manuscript pages as I stood up, flipping on the kitchen light and waiting to see if it was just the dining room bulb or if it was the power overall. Both lights flickered next and I felt a frown curl my lips as I walked into the kitchen and grabbed a flashlight from the utility drawer.

  I put it in my back pocket and worked my way down the hall to the basement door, holding my breath as I opened it. Experimentally, I inhaled a tiny bit of air, but the acrid odor that had risen from the stairwell the day before wasn’t there anymore. It didn't make logical sense, but I supposed it was a good sign. I flipped on the light and glanced toward the camcorder on the top step, locating a plug in the wall and hooking it up to charge now that I wasn’t trying not to barf.

  Good thing, too, I realized after checking the screen. Its battery life was at two percent. After replacing the camcorder on the step, I walked down the stairs and into the basement, scanning the perimeter as I headed toward the opposite wall to have a go at the fusebox.

  The lights flickered briefly again as I neared the box on the wall and I thought that I probably had more confidence about this procedure than I should, considering my limited experience with house repairs. My dad or Dave had always taken care of that stuff. Or Graham, when neither of the aforementioned had been available. As soon as I was done playing the part of a ghost hunter, I’d find a good video series on residential maintenance.

  “Just one more slew of things they should teach us in high school,” I murmured under my breath as I opened the box with a creak.

  I paused a beat to stare at the switches inside before I finally murmured, “Ah, fuck it,” and pulled out my phone to call my dad. I chewed my lip as I waited for him to answer and ended up getting his voicemail. After the tone, I said, “Hey, Dad. It’s me. Miri. Your maintenance-challenged daughter. I’m not going to touch anything until you ring me, but when you get a chance, I’d like to have a conversation about fuseboxes and power and… That stuff. Thanks. Love you.”

  I hung up and closed the box, turning on my heel to go back upstairs. The lights winked slightly, and I subconsciously scratched the bandage on my forehead before reminding myself not to pick at it if I didn’t want a scar smack-dab in the center of my face. I’d no sooner removed my nail ridge from my brow than something wrapped around my forearm and pulled.

  I shrieked and the flashlight fell out of my pocket.

  The door slammed at the top of the stairs.

  The lights flickered once, twice, and then went out completely.

  I recoiled with all my
might, but had no idea what I was recoiling from. When I was released, I fell backward and my arm started burning where I’d been grabbed. My hip hit the flashlight and I snatched it up, but instead of sticking around and shining the light around the basement, I bolted for the stairs. I took them two at a time and stumbled twice before I burst through the door and slammed it shut behind me.

  I leaned against it, nearly heaving. I switched on the flashlight and shined it down where a slow, aggressive throb was pulsing on my skin. An angry crimson welt was forming. I hadn’t gotten caught in anything—there was nothing to get caught in. The sensation of being grabbed felt horrifyingly credible… But how was that possible when the basement had been empty?

  I was still catching my breath when a distinct creak from the floorboards ghosted down the hall. I looked toward the sound, but there was nothing there.

  Shocker, I thought sarcastically—I was getting angry about not being allowed to feel safe in my own home. “If that’s you, ‘Jonah,’ or whatever your name is, you’re being an asshole. Stop,” I shot shakily into the dark hallway, switching off the flashlight and rubbing my arm, which only made it worse.

  Another wooden groan crept through the hall from the vicinity of the stairs.

  I clenched my jaw and switched the flashlight back on. I stalked toward the sound, turning once I was out of the hallway and shining the beam at the stairs. When they proved to be appropriately empty, I turned the beam to shine into the dark living room. Shadows stretched up the wall from the bulb’s onslaught and I eventually lowered it, thinking I could hunt down some tea lights to burn until the power came back on. When I started toward the kitchen, I only got as far as turning around.

  I wasn’t alone anymore.

  A figure that looked strikingly similar to Mirror Man stood at the end of the hallway, its silhouette tall, human, and encased entirely in shadow. There was no mistaking its realness this time—no tricks of the moonlight or mistaken glances. I was seeing it because it was there. There was no way my brain was creating a stress reaction that vivid.