by Steve Frech
By the time we wrap up, it’s dark, and it’s close to closing time. We shake hands one last time, and agree to set up a meeting next week, based on Mrs Trifauni’s schedule.
Once he’s gone, I check in with the staff, and Murphy and I head towards the door.
“Email me the day’s receipts,” I call over my shoulder to Sandy.
“Two stores!” she reminds me.
I stop and turn. “If this works out the way these people are planning, you can have more than that.”
She gets thoughtful, and nervously glances around. “Three stores?”
“Done.”
“Seriously?”
“Yep.” I turn back to the door. “Email me the reports.”
“Could I have gotten more?”
“You said three!”
I push open the door, and am greeted by a blast of cold air.
“Good night, boss!” I hear her call out.
“Good night!”
*
I’m buzzing the entire ride through the woods and farmland back to the house. I pull into the driveway, and see that there’s a fire in the fire pit outside the cottage. Rebecca is sitting in one of the chairs next to it. I park and hop out, followed by Murphy.
As I start walking towards her, I’m suddenly filled with an overwhelming sense of dread. Something’s off, but I can’t put my finger on it. I’m not sure if Murphy’s reading my body language or what, but even he seems cautious.
Rebecca is watching me as I approach.
I stop next to the fire pit, which is directly between us. The flickering light plays across her darkened features and red hair.
“Hi,” she says.
“Hi.”
“You know the taillight on your truck is out?”
“Yeah. I’ve been meaning to fix it.”
“How did your business meeting go?”
“Good …”
Why am I so uncomfortable? I’ve come home to this scene many times. It’s always ended with pleasantries and, sometimes, inebriated conversation. Why does this feel so different?
“Is something wrong?” Rebecca asks.
I try to shake it off. “No. Sorry. The meeting gave me a lot to think about. That’s all.”
“Oh.”
“How do you like the cottage?”
“I love it. It’s perfect.”
“Good.”
That’s when I see it—the stick doll. She’s holding it in her hands. My mouth goes dry and my knees soften. The image in front of me is paralyzing—her smile, that red hair, her holding that doll.
For a split second, she’s someone she can’t possibly be.
“Are you sure you’re okay?”
“W—what?”
She notices that I’m looking at the doll. Her eyes drift down to it and back up to me. Maybe it’s just a trick of the dancing glow of the fire, but I catch something accusatory, something righteous in her gaze.
“I’m sorry,” she says. “I was just admiring it inside, and I had it in my hands when I came out here to start the fire.”
“No. No reason to be sorry.”
It has to be a coincidence. It has to be.
This afternoon, I had wanted to talk to her, to get to know her. Now, I want to get away from her. I need to get away from her.
I finally find my voice. “Well, I’m going to head inside. If there’s anything you need, let me know.”
She cocks her head. “Are you sure you don’t want to hang out?”
She’s being deliberate. That smile. The doll. The red hair. All she needs is the scar. This can’t be a coincidence, can it?
“I—I’d love to,” I stammer. “But that business thing I was just at …”
She nods, sympathetically. “A lot on your mind?”
“Yeah.”
I feel like a wounded mouse staring up at a grinning cat.
“So, if you need anything …” I weakly offer.
“I’ll call you.”
“… great.”
I turn and begin walking away.
“Good night,” she calls out.
“Good night,” I say over my shoulder.
Murphy follows me up the gently sloping lawn to the house. All the while, I’m fighting the urge to look back.
Once inside, I stand with my back to the door, trying to catch my breath. I go to the kitchen and pour myself a cup of water. I down it in one gulp, pour another one, and repeat the process. After standing there for I don’t know how long, I go to the cabinet over the fridge. I pull out a bottle of bourbon, pour myself a healthy dose, and down that as well. I wrangle my nerves and head into the living room, keeping the lights off. I go to the window, and peer through the curtains.
The fire pit glows but she’s no longer there. The light in the cottage is on. There are instructions as part of the rental agreement that you are not to leave a fire in the fire pit unattended, but I’m not going back down there. I want to stay in here, and convince myself that I’m being paranoid.
It was a coincidence. It has to be.
I pull the chair over to the window, sit down, and watch through the small space in the curtains.
There is no movement from the cottage. Only the single, solitary light.
*
I’ve been sitting here for hours, watching. Murphy’s curled up in his bed with his favorite red tennis ball. It’s midnight, and I’m slowly coming to my senses.
Of course, I’m being stupid. I’m seeing things that aren’t there. Yes, it was uncanny. All she needed was the scar above her eye, and that would have settled it, but she didn’t have one. It was a bunch of little coincidences that my mind assembled into an impossible conclusion.
Finally, the light in the cottage goes dark. The fire has long since burned out.
I’m an idiot.
I rise from the chair, joints aching, and head upstairs to my bedroom.
“Ridiculous,” I say aloud as I crawl into bed.
Murphy pads into the room. He comes around to the side of the bed, rests his snout on the mattress right in front of my face, and looks at me.
“Yeah. Fine. All right. Just for tonight. Up-up.”
He leaps onto the bed, and curls into a ball near my feet. He’s not supposed to do this. He’s got his own bed in the corner, but I’ve got too much on my mind to argue with him.
“You’re going to feel so stupid in the morning,” I tell myself and turn off the light.
The lock snaps open.
I continue to stare at it, immobilized with fear. I’m sweating. I can taste the bile in my throat. I know what’s coming. I know what’s behind that door.
“No … no …”
The handle turns with a groan that echoes through the basement.
I open my eyes.
The sun is coming up.
I go through the process of catching my breath and remembering where I am. That’s two nights in a row. That never happens. Not since they first started. It’s usually once every few weeks. The most troubling thing about this time is that the nightmare was slightly different. It always ends with the lock popping open. This time, the nightmare kept going, and the handle turned. That was new.
I roll over and glance at Murphy, who is taking up more than half of the bed. He’s lying on his back with his legs splayed out in what I callously call his “highway dog” pose.
I shake the image of the dream from my head and play the events of last night over in my mind.
I was right. I was seeing things that weren’t there. I’m also right about feeling stupid.
I take a shower and absent-mindedly run my finger over the two dime-sized scars in my side, while I think about Rebecca. I’m going to apologize to her for being so awkward last night. I want that positive review and the curiosity about who she is has come back.
I go down to the kitchen and put on a pot of coffee. I look out the window above the sink at the sun peeking over the hills. My gaze drifts down to the cottage.
I sto
p.
The car is gone.
That’s not unheard of. Some people head out early to catch the sunrise or to make good time to their next destination. What makes me stop is that the door to the cottage is open.
Coffee in hand and Murphy close behind, I head out the door, step off the porch, and start walking towards the cottage. The woods are playing their early chorus of birdsong. A morning mist hangs a few feet above the ground. As I get closer, I realize that no, my eyes are not playing tricks on me. The front door is wide open.
I stop outside the door, and peer into the cottage.
“Miss Lowden?”
The sound of my voice stops the nearby birds, leaving the air filled with an unnerving silence. There’s no hint of a reply from inside.
Murphy waits by my side, sensing my tension.
“Rebecca?”
Nothing.
I step through the door. The air inside the cottage is cold, meaning the door has been open for hours. Nothing’s been touched. The coffee packets wait in the basket by the coffee maker. There are no water droplets in the sink. The throw pillows on the couch are exactly where I left them yesterday.
“Hello?”
I start walking down the short hall to the bedroom. Halfway down, I turn my head to look into the bathroom. The towels and toiletries are undisturbed.
I continue to the end of the hall. The bedroom door is closed. I stop next to the door and stand motionless, listening for any sound from within. I glance back down the hall. Murphy is waiting anxiously in the living room, prepared to flee at any moment.
I tap the door.
“Rebecca?”
There’s no response, which means either she’s not in there, or she is in there, and there’s something really wrong. I gently grasp the knob, turn, and slowly open the door.
The stick doll is on the bed, propped up on the pillows. The guestbook is lying open before it. Angry red letters are carved across the pages. The coffee cup slips from my hand, and falls to the floor.
I step closer, and a name stares back at me from the pages of the guestbook.
LAURA AISLING
The dread of last night comes crashing back, tenfold. My mind was not playing tricks on me. It wasn’t a coincidence.
That wasn’t Laura Aisling. It can’t be, because Laura Aisling is dead, and I thought I was the only one who knew that.
So this means someone knows my secret.
Chapter 2
“Yes, I know the account was deleted this morning. I’m trying to figure out who she was.”
“I don’t understand. Was there a problem with her payment?”
“No. That’s not—”
“Was there damage to your property?”
“No.”
“Then, I don’t see the—”
“You said the account was created two months ago. She made one reservation request. My place. Right?”
“Let me see … Yes. That appears to be correct.”
“And then, when she left my place this morning, she deleted the account?”
“Yes.”
“And I’m saying that I’m trying to figure out who the hell Rebecca Lowden really was. I’ve tried online searches, and I can’t find anything about her. Nothing on Facebook or LinkedIn, nothing on Google. It’s like she never existed.”
“Sir, at Be Our Guest, we strongly discourage any attempt to contact a guest outside of your transaction on our site. Besides, I’m still not seeing the problem. It is unusual, but I don’t see anything to be concerned about. I’m sorry that you might not get the review, but your property is one of our most popular spots. I can see that you’ve already had two reservation requests yesterday for December.”
“That’s not the point.”
This has been my entire morning. I immediately tried to find out who Rebecca Lowden was on my own so that I wouldn’t have to contact Be Our Guest and I could avoid these questions, but my search came up empty. So here I am, arguing on the phone with a rep from Be Our Guest.
“I’m still trying to understand this,” the representative continues. “You’re saying that there was no damage to your property?”
“No, dammit. I told you that already—”
“Did you try contacting her through her contact info?”
“Yes. The number is disconnected, and I’m not crossing my fingers on the email I sent.”
“Okay. Yes, I admit, that’s odd.”
“Do you?” I reply with maximum snark. “Do you admit that?”
“Sir—”
“Look, she deleted the account, but you guys still have her information, right? You have a copy of her driver’s license?” I know they do. Owners and renters alike have to submit to a background check when they sign up. I had to email a scanned copy of my license to set up my account. So did she.
“Yes.”
“Do you have it pulled up, right now?”
“Sir, I’m not going to give you any information from her—”
“I don’t want you to, but do me a favor and do a search for the address on her driver’s license. I want to know if the address is real.”
“Mr Reese, that would be highly irregular.”
“I’m not asking you to tell me where she lives. Just tell me if it’s a real address. If it is, I’ll hang up, and you and I can go about our day.”
He sighs. “One moment …”
I hear the clicking of his keyboard through the phone. It stops, as does his breath.
“You still with me?” I ask.
“Well … yes, there does seem to be an issue with the address.”
“Where did it put you; the middle of the ocean?”
“It might just be a problem with the—”
I shake my head. “It’s gotta be a fake ID.”
“Well, that is a possibility. I’ll be sure to make a note of it in the—”
“Let me ask you something: just how thorough are those background checks you do over there at Be Our Guest? I know they cost money. You guys cutting corners?”
“Mr Reese,” he answers with a new note of concern in his voice, “I’ll pass this along to my supervisor, and they’ll get back to you once we’ve resolved the issue.”
“Like you said, the account’s deleted, so there’s nothing you can really resolve, but sure, you let me know.”
I hang up the phone.
Whoever Rebecca Lowden is or was, she went to great lengths to mess with me, and I want to know why.
*
There’s another couple checking in this afternoon. I’ve got a few hours until they arrive, and since she didn’t touch anything, the cottage is ready to go. I rip the pages out of the guestbook, and burn them in the fire pit, destroying the only tangible evidence I have of her existence.
I need to think. I need a trip to The Sanctuary.
Behind the cottage is a path leading into the woods. About half a mile in, over some ridges and across a stream, is a dense area of pine trees. For the life of me, I can’t figure out why it’s there. When I first came across it while scouting the property, I thought it might be a man-made pine farm that had been forgotten, but the trees aren’t in rows. It’s just a fluke, I guess.
I reset the passcode on the key lockbox for the cottage, grab Murphy’s favorite red tennis ball, and we head off into the woods. Murphy knows the route, and darts back and forth across the path, going from smell to smell. We take this walk three or four times a week. Today, he strays a little further from the path than usual, but I don’t bother with his leash. My thoughts are too tangled.
Birds chirp from the trees as we make our way further and further into the forest. Normally, I would be drinking it in, but I can’t. I keep going over last night in my mind—the hair, the doll, the word nearly carved into the scrapbook. We arrive at the stream. There’s almost no water in it, but sure enough, Murphy finds a puddle to splash in.
We crest the final ridge and the path slopes down to the right, leading to the opening of The Sanct
uary.
The thick, interwoven pine branches that form the opening look like the mouth of a cave. Murphy runs ahead and plunges through. I follow a few seconds behind.
Stepping through the opening, I’m wrapped in almost total silence. The soft breeze can’t penetrate the needles overhead. The sun’s light is scattered, casting the area into an even shade. Murphy barks at a fleeing squirrel and there’s not even an echo. About fifty yards in, amongst the massive trunks, is a clearing. There’s a downed tree off to the side, like it was purposefully placed there to serve as a bench. You can sit on it and look up at the sky through the hole in the trees, like you’re staring out of a well.
I love this place. The outside world doesn’t exist here. It was in this spot, sitting on this log, that I made the decision to buy the house and start the coffee shop. For a while, I didn’t tell my guests about it because I didn’t want to share it, but one day, a guy from Tulsa who was staying at the cottage found it, raved about it in his review, and I figured since the secret was out, I’d use it as a selling point.
I take a seat on the log. Murphy gives up on the squirrel and runs over to me. He sits and waits.
“What?” I ask, with an exaggerated shrug.
Murphy’s tail begins to thump on the ground.
“I don’t know what you want,” I say, shaking my head.
He yaps, and lowers his head.
“Okay, fine.”
I take the red tennis ball out of my pocket and begin throwing it for him. He darts after it, brings it back, and we repeat the process over and over. My mind begins to drift, and I start thinking of her.
She’s always there, in the back of my mind, the pangs of guilt, and the dreams. After so many years, I’ve buried it in the recesses of my mind, but after the events of this morning, I’m pulled back to the party where we first met—
—at a party at a frat house at Wilton University in Rutland. It was a Christian college, but even some Christian colleges have frat houses. Our introduction happened where a lot of college introductions happen—over a keg of Bud Lite.
The party had spilled into the yard. She was sticking close to a group of girlfriends while us guys circled like sharks, waiting for the opportunity to pick them off. The problem was that all the sharks wanted the same fish. She had light blue eyes, pale skin, high cheekbones, a strong chin, and gorgeous, flowing red hair that cascaded over her shoulders in waves. In all this perfection, there was the small scar over her right eye that added an air of mystery.