by SaJoBa3
2.2 Raisinville, Population 2714
The alley was lined with a wall on one side and the backs of the shops on the other. Beside the cafe were an auto parts store on one side and a hardware store on the other. With all the Y-chromosomes the two establishments should have attracted, Sarah figured she would have at least some eye-candy to gawk at while she bussed tables at the cafe. That wasn’t really the case.
A hairy plumber complete with butt-crack and a few mechanic junkies from the car dealership down the street were about all she got to ogle while she was at work. Not the best of choices. She dodged the stray cats crawling around the un-lidded garbage cans by the alley wall, her attention on the intermittent sun that played through the lane. Late day made the shadows and streaks of lights stretch in bizarre, sharp shapes and she felt the day alternately hot and cold on her bare arms.
The row of homes down from the alley and a side street over were mostly rentals and apartment houses with four suites apiece. Her mom’s house and two others were the only real family-size homes for rent. The last tenant had been there seven years, until he died of some undisclosed illness at the beginning of the summer. The place had been empty until yesterday, and Sarah knew her mom was thrilled to have it rented again.
They needed the extra income, and more money meant a happier mom, and more money for clothes.
She instinctively flicked a frayed edge of her jean cutoffs. Not that she needed more clothes, but school was back in session and she needed to make a statement in the freshman hierarchy. A little extra cash would help that.
She crossed the next side street and caught the sidewalk that would put her down the back alley of the Brooks Street rental house. Kids were playing ball down the street further on, but where 417 backed up to the alley, it was all older tenants.
Except him.
Sarah slowed, watchful for the man her mom had leased the house to, the one who had taken Croy’s crash pad, the one who she’d spied on from the attic.
The shed had once been a garage, but now it was more workshop and shelving than anything else. The big garage door didn’t even work anymore, bolted shut at the bottom, and only with the side door for an entrance. Sarah stopped at the wide car door that faced the alley. It was an old design, going all the way back to the 1950s, and served as the back fence for the narrow lot. The side door was smack up against the chain link fence that ran a full four feet to the next yard.
From the garage’s side door she could see into the rental’s backyard. It was overhung with tree branches that shaded most of the small yard, and beyond that, the narrow clapboard house rose two stories. The back door was crooked, approached by a two-step porch that was twice as wide as the screened door. She could see nothing inside the door.
She knew it opened to the kitchen, leading to the small living room – parlor, back when the house had been built – and that the main floor had a bathroom and pantry. Upstairs was another bathroom and two bedrooms. She found herself holding her breath as her fingers rested on the garage side door, her eyes squinting as she tried to see into the rental house’s backdoor. Nothing.
Course not, she thought. The guy’s probably at work. She frowned. Then the door should be shut.
Her fingers wiggled the doorknob to the garage until she recalled it was locked. She fished the key out of her pocket and plugged it in. She opened the door and went inside. The garage was dim, with only limited light coming from the single window that looked into the rental house’s backyard. She let her eyes adjust, making out the rows of shelves and storage tubs and totes against the walls. She headed by instinct to the window, where the pane of dull gray-yellow light shed into the building with dusty swirls.
She stood to one side of the window, trying not to cough in the thick air that smelled of mildew and spider webs. “Halloween,” she mumbled lowly to herself, waiting for her eyes to become useful in the bad lighting. The tubs against the wall were all marked, even color-coded, but in the scant light she couldn’t distinguish some of their colors.
“Christmas,” she muttered, seeing a strand of tinsel hanging over one tub’s side. “More Christmas,” she added, gaze rising to the tub atop the first where star stickers were decorated along the lettering.
Her attention sifted over the other tubs.
A beige tub with a pilgrim hat outlined in black. “Thanksgiving...”
A white tub that showed signs of greenish mold at one corner. “Winter...”
She stepped around a tall shelf and startled at the sight of the next tub. On top of it sat a man, legs dangling off the front, his enormous head sagged to one side. She nearly shrieked before recognizing it. She huffed a long sigh, feeling her pulse jump as the scarecrow’s bulbous face smiled hideously back at her.
“Hi, Tommy,” she said, clearing her throat as she knocked her shins on a tote jutting out from the edge of the shelf. She grinned fully at the scarecrow. He was three years old this year; he was also man-tall, made of an old pair of jeans from Croy, and had large X-button eyes and a stitched mouth. Sarah had gotten second place in the annual scarecrow contest that year. Her mom had kept Tommy, proudly displaying him in her cafe from the first day of October to the day after Thanksgiving. He’d been barrel-chested and well-stuffed with a pillow, but now his filling had shifted and he’d grown a saggy paunch-belly.
Tommy smiled back at her, unblinking.
Sarah gave him a wave and was about to rekindle their friendship, when the light at the shed window clouded over. She looked around the shelf to look at the pane of dirty glass.
Nothing was there.
The light was back, dusty and semi-luminous.
Sarah turned her back to Tommy and the wall of decoration tubs and carefully stepped around the shelves, keeping to one side of the window so she was out of sight.
Again the light blinked darker, then back to full light.
She was two steps away from the window and ready to look out it when another sound met her ears. It was a brushing sound along the wall near the window, as if someone was leaning or sliding along the outer wall.
Sarah froze, eyes riveted to the dusty panes of glass. Nothing moved.
The sound came again, this time right in front of her at the wall, rubbing, shifting, eyelevel. She swallowed, stepping back until her sandal caught the tub behind her. With flailing arms, she managed to not fall over, but was now a step nearer to the wall, and the sounds.
It’s him, she thought. The tenant.
And why not? she asked herself. It was his yard. The shed was off-limits, but the renter had full access to the backyard.
Something touched her shin and she nearly yelped. Images of critters leaped to her mind – it was a clay floor and known for the occasional rat – before she looked down to see a loop of garland dangling over a tub, brushing against her leg. She exhaled slowly, looking back to the wall.
A head appeared in the window.
Sarah froze.
It was a profile, a man’s head, from the shoulders up.
She swallowed, not moving.
He was looking at something along the outer wall, a glare of displeasure on his face, mouth set in a grim line.
When he remained unmoving, Sarah dared to blink.
Not a bad face, she decided, despite the sour expression.
But it wasn’t just the stern look – it was more than the stony expression on his face – something vacant in his dark eyes.
His hair was light, nearly white-blond and disheveled, crowning features both sharp and granite-like, somewhere in his twenties, and eyes as black as night.
At least, that’s what he looked like through the dusty window.
Definitely lean, she thought, carefully swallowing her startle, eyes moving over his shoulders and neck. Tightly muscled but not quite gaunt, his black t-shirt pulled at him as his arms moved with something out of Sarah’s sight. His focus was to the right of the window, eyes barely moving as he worked.
And then there was a snapping sound. A sickly snap
of something small and twig-like.
He bent forward, his profile out of sight, only his shoulders and upper back visible in the window.
Sarah stepped closer to the wall, sliding to the side, able to see only his back and occasionally an elbow.
And then there was another snap and a stretching, guttural sound.
Sarah covered her mouth with her hand, eyes frozen on the pane of glass as she watched him move out of sight. A tiny squeal came from the other side of the wall, just where she stood. She turned to look at it, not wanting to see through it, not wanting to guess what made the animalish whimper past the siding.
She stopped breathing as another sound reached her.
At first she thought it was something sliding, but then she distinctly heard the sucking sound, head-high, slurping. And then a small belch.
The shadow at the window was back, this time blocking the light.
Sarah stayed against the wall, out of the line of vision should anyone look in.
And he was looking in.
She could see his shadow on the shelves in the pale, dusty light. He was facing the window, inches from the glass, his outline on the shelf looking like it was cut from stone.
She didn’t move, watching the shadowy shape as it stared into the shed. It turned, his profile shifting to look her way inside. She didn’t breathe, conscious only of the dust in the air, her pulse in her throat, and the light blocked by the man on the other side of the glass.
He stepped away.
Sarah continued to watch, paralyzed by the angle of light now casting sideways into the dank room. What made snapping noises? her mind prompted. What broke so easily, like tender bones, like eggshells under pressure?
A turn of the doorknob made her nerves jolt. She couldn’t see the doorknob from her spot against the wall, but she knew the click.
The door opened, barely creaking, and late afternoon sun timidly shined in.
She could hear him, hear something anyway, but he didn’t step inside.
She wished she had locked the door.
He paused for a long moment, much longer than Sarah could hold her breath, but she held it anyway.
And then she could see him, his profile past the shelves. He was staring at Tommy.
For a full thirty seconds he frowned at the scarecrow.
And then he grinned, stepped back outside, and closed the door.
Sarah wanted to heave a sigh of relief, but the window darkened and then grew bright again.
A door closed far away, at the house.
Sarah choked out a breath and gasped for air.
She gulped air and didn’t move for several moments, chiding herself for spooking so easily. He was a good tenant; he hadn’t ventured into the shed off-limits to him. Merely looked in. That was it.
That’s what she told herself.
The snapping noises replayed through her mind.
Screw the decorations, she thought, heading carefully to the door. She’d get them later—maybe even bring Croy.
No, she shook her head. She wasn’t that much of a baby. She didn’t need Croy.
Her hand turned the doorknob and she opened it, carefully peeking out. No one. Just late day, with evening on its way.
She slipped out and closed and locked the door behind her.
He hadn’t locked the door, she noted. A chill swept up her spine.
Why hadn’t...?
“Why should he?” she mumbled. He’s not supposed to be in here anyway.
She stepped to the fence and looked along the back of the garage that faced into the backyard. Past the window a dead squirrel lay in the tufts of tall grass.
She grimaced at the pile of fur and bushy tail, and then she then turned to leave. Maybe that’s what he’d been looking at, or moving around, or...
She shook her head and paused at the lane as she left. Behind her she felt something, something cold and dark boring into the back of her head yet somehow still burning through her ponytail. She could almost smell the hair burning.
She looked up at the rental house.
Out the top window stood the man, the same silhouette that had been in the doorway, the hard features she’d seen profiled in the shed window.
But now he was looking at her.
Sarah meant to wave, but she didn’t.
He didn’t move, focus locked onto her.
She made her legs move, and then ran down the lane, all the way to the Poppyseed Cafe.
...The end for now...
Thanks for reading. More coming soon!