by J. L. Myers
“Argh.” I swung my legs over the edge of the bed, shoving my feet into my Ugg boots. They were old, growing a hole over my big toes because they were a size too small, and stained by splatters of paint, but they were still soft and comfortable. Seconds from the Salvation Army shop in town and a lucky find. “Stop thinking about him!”
I glanced to the makeshift kitchen to the right, where a sometimes-working hotplate sat on a card table beside a tall upturned bucket that doubled as a seat and dishwasher, before my eyes glided over to my canvases by the window. I had orders to fulfill and an art auction coming up fast. Only a week away. But last night had killed my creativity well and truly. The magical landscapes I painted from my dreams failed to hold a seat in my mind last night. I glared at the devastatingly sexy face staring back at me. Why did I have to paint him? All six foot three (seriously, that was minimum!) with his flawless, never-had-a-freckle-in-his-life face, smoldering I-can-make-you-scream-in-pleasure eyes, and hair that looked good wet, dry, and dripping over the edge of my bath. “Grrrr!” I turned away and huffed. Just because this guy gave me sexy eyes didn’t mean I had to go all head-over-heels and squeal like a child given a puppy for their birthday. “Get a grip, Calli.”
So I’d never had a boyfriend. That had always been fine with me. Not that I was a primrose virgin. I’d done the deed with some random just to get it over with. So it would be on my terms. So there was no attachment. And so there was one less thing a person could steal from me. And once had been more than enough. Guys, and not to mention girls, thought I was weird anyway. So it’s not like I had to fend anyone off after escaping my last foster home…which I had done, many times. My fear of mirrors and reflective surfaces started it. The way I used to scream if anyone crept up on me, or even if anyone tried to touch me, kept it going. My first foster family had been the worst. A mother who was high on opiates, and a drunk for a father who would backhand me and lock me in the dark basement without food or water if I ever messed up. Which was every day, according to him. Back then I blamed myself. I thought I was the bad child.
Now I knew better.
Everyone else was bad. Mamma was right.
Never ask for help and never accept anything from anyone.
The only exception I had made was accepting jobs and my scholarship—which I worked my ass off to make happen, thank you very much. I never wished for anything more than what I earned. I never dreamed of better, just of another place entirely.
Now it was time to make some sense out of the past twelve hours.
I sighed and went to the wooden storage trunk at the end of my bed. The hinges creaked as I opened the heavy lid. This trunk was one of the pieces left to me by my mother. Apart from my Salvation Army finds, this was one of my only possessions from her…
I needed to keep busy to clear my mind. Even more than that, I needed to find out if Sexonlegs and his sudden appearance and haunting words had anything to do with Mamma and her death.
I picked up her old corduroy jacket. It was khaki green and so soft and warm. There was a tear in one elbow—from where she’d fallen from the warehouse stairs—and the bloodstains hadn’t completely come out, but it was hers, a memory no one could take from me. I lifted the jacket to my nose and breathed in deeply. Despite spot washing the blood out, it still smelled of her too. A mixture of sea spray and home, a place I would always be welcomed into, but a place that no longer existed. I sighed as I hugged the jacket to my chest and closed my eyes, trying to make believe that I was hugging her rather than an inanimate object. “I miss you, Mamma. And now this guy is following me. He said the strangest things…things that remind me of you. I don’t know what to…”
I trailed off. Not because I suddenly felt silly for talking to my dead Mom. Yet another reason kids always looked at me funny and whispered behind my back. Something was jabbing into my palm where I clung to the jacket. I lowered the material, letting it fall over my lap while still keeping my fist tight over the offending object. And it was an object—something was trapped in the sleeve.
Pulling the sleeve out, I tunneled my way up the arm. I’d worn this jacket a few times when it was super cold. But most of the time, I left it safe in the trunk. I didn’t want to lose the smell of her, the fantasy that she was still somehow here with me. As my fingers inched higher, I found the spot I clutched with my other hand and loosened my grip. The item was hard and lumpy, long and misshaped, being thinner in the middle and bigger on the ends. But it was trapped. It was inside the lining.
I dropped the jacket and laid it out flat, pulling open one side, I turned the sleeve inside out...and found a patch that had been stitched into the arm. A thread was pulling loose and I tugged it a little, opening up a small hole. Working the satin lining around the item, I managed to get one end to the hole. I frowned, unsure of what I was seeing. It looked like… “A lump of coral?”
I ripped the hole wider, pulling the item out. The outer layer began to crumble away, exposing a smooth brass length through the middle. “A key?” The coral layer continued to crumble with my help, revealing a key that was old and dull, a style that would match an antique door or ornamental box. Three numbers were etched into the shaft. Four-six-four. The top end was a series of three swirls, two below with one centered above.
The moment I brushed the last of the debris away and touched the unusually warm metal, a spark fired into my fingertips. The view beyond the dirty windows where pre-morning light teased the sky turned hazy. And then everything turned black. Sudden images lit up in my mind, so alive and so real—my heart twisted—of the day my mother died. In this warehouse, I saw her frightened face. The way she held me and ran to escape the danger that lurked so close behind. But then the threat vanished. A pier flashed in my vision. Followed by a bank of lockers—the central one marked in thick black pen with four-six-four.
The loft rushed back as the visions faded, and I staggered until my legs hit the bed and I fell back onto my butt. “What the Hell?”
I was losing my damned mind. Going as loopy as Mamma had been in the end. Or was I?
Maybe I was finally seeing what had always been there, hiding beneath the surface, waiting for me to discover its existence. I wasn’t sure what I hoped was the truth. Real life nightmares, or an impending trip to the psych ward—such awesome options, what would you wish for? But I did know one thing. Once daylight broke away from the night, I would split fact from fiction, and no one, not even Sexonlegs, was going to stop me.
And I knew just who might have all the answers I so desperately needed. Answers that could shatter my world apart or give life to the past I had never been able to bury.
I had a visit to make…
Chapter Six
Making it past all the warehouses and industrial buildings, I finally stopped checking over my shoulder. Sexonlegs—I seriously needed to make up another name for him—was nowhere in sight. I had expected him to show up out of thin air as I snuck from the warehouse, but nope. Seemed I was alone. As usual. And for maybe the first time ever, I almost felt like I didn’t want to remain that way. Now I frowned as I passed Howard B Thomas Memorial Park. I so badly wanted to slow my pace, to take a moment to reflect by the barrier that peered out over the calm Yantic River. Or to just sit in the large gazebo, watching absentmindedly as boats drifted off from the jetty moorings while I gathered my thoughts. But there was no time. I was already late for the meeting I’d demanded via the warehouse phone in the wee hours of this morning.
Fiery hair in a high pony because it was a mess that needed to be tamed, and my shoes squeaking from still being wet, I cut right up Chelsea Harbor Drive and sped across the six-lane main road when the walking sign turned green. Finally, I reached the redbrick building and flung myself through the doors. Two flights of stairs later, I made it through the frosted glass door that read Dr. Sollomon. Psychiatrist.
“Calli, you made it!” Greg stalled from retracting his head through the wooden door on the other side of the empty waiting room. H
e smiled, his gray eyes wrinkling and as dull as his side-swept hair. “After your panicked call, I thought you weren’t coming.”
Breathing hard from the run, my words came out choppy. “Nope. Just late.” The truth was, expecting to be stalked all over again had slowed me down after accidentally falling into an exhausted sleep. I had stared as I crept, sliding along warehouse walls and hiding behind bends and streetlight posts. My heart that had been racing when I left quickly fell with stupid—what is wrong with me?—disappointment. But I wasn’t about to tell him any of that. “Should I come back another time? If you were already leaving—”
Greg spared a frown down at his hand in his pocket before looking back up. “No, Calli. Not at all.” He held the door open, smiling even wider than before. “Come in.”
The room inside was small but comfortable. A desk sat in front of a long window, neat and tidy as always. A coffee table centered the space, each end marked by wide cushioned sitting chairs that were about ten times more comfortable than my bed. I took my position on the other side as Greg slid into his seat across from me. With his other patients, he usually sat on my side, but he knew how edgy having my back to the door made me feel, so this had long ago become my spot and stayed that way for our sessions. And there had been many. Court ordered after my mother’s death—murder—Greg had become a safe place for me. A constant in all the uprooting and new houses with mean and deceitful people. Once my mom’s shrink, now he was mine.
Greg’s head turned to the side, eyes staring blankly for a moment before returning to me. “Have you thought more about the mirrors?”
I flinched at his words, reminded not only of my mother’s warning but also my stalker’s words from last night. Hooks marked places on the walls that pictures usually sat in frames with glass over the top. Each one was on the ground, leaning face-first up against the wall—to keep the reflections out of my sight. A smaller frame sat facedown on his desk too; a picture of his deceased wife…except it was in the center of his workspace rather than to one side. Even the glossy silver balls that you were meant to spin around on your palm as they chimed were put away in their box with the lid shut. All requirements for me to keep seeing my shrink, ones he’d tried and failed to get me to overcome. The cleanliness of his windows behind the sheer white curtain was bad enough. Already I could hear the incoming promise of voices that raised my pulse.
I gulped. “I’m not ready.” I would never be ready. Not today. Not ever. “Please don’t push me on this, Greg. And besides, that’s not why I came. I need answers. About her. About her death. About…her delusions.”
Dr. Sollomon sighed, disappointment clear in his tired eyes as he watched me. But there was something else too, a clue lingering beneath the surface that I couldn’t decipher. “You know it is all in your mind. The fear. The memories of that night and what you remember your mother saying to you. Calli, you were four. The mind at that age is still changing so rapidly. Long-term memories don’t create permanent blocks in our subconscious before age seven. Most are lucky to remember a blip of an event, person, or place before then. There are exceptions, especially when trauma is involved, but you were four. Real and make-believe are so easily misconstrued at that age. The mind wants an explanation for horror, and your young brain made up the answers.”
I’d heard it all before verbatim. Greg knew what he was talking about and I trusted his expertize in his field, but that didn’t change how I felt or anything that had happened back then, especially after last night.
Greg looked at his hand in his pocket again, his frown intensifying before he looked back up at me. “Your mother abandoned you, Calli. For whatever reason, she left. There was no monster, no dark spindly creature that crawled out of an impossibly frozen oil slick. A mirror cannot hurt you.”
I drew in a deep breath, closing my eyes as I dropped my head back against the soft headrest. My legs came up, feet tucking into my backside as I hugged my knees. “I know, Greg.” I didn’t, but there was no point arguing. The sooner I agreed, the sooner he’d drop this mirror thing and let me get to the usual follow-up questions to make sure I was looking after myself now that I was on my own—as if I hadn’t been all along. Then I could lie my way around the facts since it was clear he wasn’t going to divulge anything voluntarily. I had to try to get at least some clues on my latest hallucinations. Because that’s all they could be, right? Sexy, scary, and dangerous hallucinations. “But yesterday, I saw something…”
“Like what?”
My eyes flung open, shocked at the closeness of his voice. And then they widened, seeing Greg leaning over me, and the small, black-framed shaving mirror he held in front of my face. A mirror he’d been hiding in his pocket with the plan of springing it on me?
I pushed back in the chair as if I could somehow become part of the seat and fall right through it. When I didn’t, I grabbed onto his wrist and pushed back—until I caught sight of my reflection.
Yep, absolutely bonkers. My emerald eyes were wide and bloodshot from fear and years of lacking sleep. Why sleep when the monsters steal your dreams and turn them into nightmares? My hair was a mess, all tangled with flyaways sticking out from my high ponytail. My complexion was blotchy, cheeks blushed and neck patchy like I was about to sprout hives. Yay, another thing for people to stare at! And if Sexonlegs had been real, with how unkempt I looked, there’s no way he would have given me those sexy bedroom eyes.
“See, Calli. There’s nothing to fear.”
I surprised myself by pulling the mirror closer. Unlike my mom, I had tiny freckles dotting my nose and cheeks. My features were almost identical to hers, minus a few years, but my eyes. I blinked and did a double take. Geez, they looked even bigger than they had only yesterday, and what the hell was wrong with my ear? One of them had a round nub at the top. Did warts grow on ears?
As I stared harder, my hand slowly lifting to touch the strange bump, I suddenly froze. My face shifted in the reflection, pale with freckles melting away as my skin blackened. My ears lengthened, growing pointed tips. My chin grew too, becoming sharp as my lips cracked into a smile to reveal crooked yellow teeth. The face smiling back at me with glee was one I could never confuse or forget; the monster that killed my mother.
“It’s not real.” I blinked, and my large eyes changed from emerald to ice-blue.
“Oh yes, I am.” A cackle bubbled from the monster’s chapped lips, punching into my ears like drums. “Finally I’ve found you. I have searched for so long. Now your heart is mine.”
I snatched the mirror from my shrink and threw it down at the ground as I leaped over the armrest. The soles of my sneakers came down on the glass, cracking the palm-sized square into fragmented shards. But it wasn’t enough. The cackling laughter got louder and that monstrous face, now broken into dozens of pieces, didn’t disappear. Stomping over and over again, I screamed, “Die! Die!” my heart racing and sweat sticking my holey T-shirt to my chest and back.
Strong hands caught me from behind and hauled me backward. “Shhh, Calli. It’s okay.” Greg was right behind me, his grip strong but his voice calm. Hadn’t he seen it? Couldn’t he hear it? He threw his notebook down, covering the shards as he spun me around. “It’s over. Okay? Just breathe for me.”
I shook my head, hearing the cackle grow fainter as my pulse took up the quota of noise inside my ears. “You didn’t hear it?”
“It’s all in your head, Calli. It’s not real.” Greg’s expression was worried, and honest regret painted his feelings clearly in his eyes. “The mind is a powerful thing. But it is a trickster too. It was too soon. I know that now—”
“No.” I pulled out of his hold and stalked to the door, flinging it open wide. The whisper of raspy words reached my ears.
“Run, little girl. Run. All the more fun to hunt you down.”
I shook my head as I glanced back, suddenly certain my stalker had been right. “You have no idea what you’ve unleashed.” And then I was gone, running from my fears and a whisp
ered promise that no matter where I ran to nowhere would be safe.
Chapter Seven
I stepped off the bus later that afternoon, shielding my eyes against the falling sun that beamed down over me. “This better be it.” Patting the pocket of my skinny purple jeans, I felt the hard length of the key I’d shoved in there. Since running from my shrink, I’d scoured every storage property in Norwich and come up empty. Now I was irritated, tired, and yet again wondering if I was going mad. I knew the key wouldn’t fit a storage locker. So far they had all been bolted shut with padlocks or combination locks. But I’d seen a flash of the lockers last night, and if the key was real, those lockers had to be too, right?
Yeah, I know. The deep end was racing up and I was diving in like a killer whale. But what else could I do? I needed answers.
I stalked forward, stalling at the gutter for a few cars to pass, then I darted across the street. The Thames River loomed beyond the train tracks and the empty concrete lot, and the water made me think of ‘sexy guy’ who shall not be named. But I wasn’t heading through the lot and past the abandoned set of warehouses to glimpse over the quiet river in fear—or hope—that he would magically appear like the God of Water. This was the last place I had wanted to come, where the river barely moved and created a mirror-like surface of the blue sky and fluffy clouds above. Already I could hear it. The faintest of whispers on the gentle breeze that tickled my neck and blew my long hair back.
I looked around, on edge.
Nothing was behind me, and there was no one walking on the streets. Maybe it was all in my head, the sounds carried on the wind from the houses I could barely see. Yeah, that had to be it. Still, the location and the seclusion, being separated from the suburban homes that were a street over, raised my paranoia.