by E. M. Parker
Determined not to engage him, Fiona said nothing and looked away. Iris, however, was not willing to let him off so easy. “In the two-plus years I’ve lived next to you, that has got to be the first friendly word I’ve heard you utter to anyone. This must be a wonderful day indeed.” Then she turned a dubious eye to her son. “So how long have you two gentlemen been acquainted?”
Quinn appeared nervous to answer. “We…”
Noah quickly jumped in. “I helped him once when he was loading some things out of your apartment, Mrs. Matheson. Your son’s a really good guy.”
“I’m aware of that. But you’re not, which makes it odd that you would want to befriend him.”
“Mom, relax,” an embarrassed Quinn chided. “It’s not that serious.”
“Exactly, Mrs. Matheson. It’s not that serious,” Noah echoed with a grin. He clearly relished the sudden tension his presence created.
Iris wasn’t fazed. “You should probably run along now. It would be positively awful if you lost your job because we made you late for work. Wouldn’t that be awful everyone?”
Fiona and Quinn looked at one another with the same mortified expression.
“Yes, it would be awful,” Iris continued.
“Right. Well, on that charming note…” Noah turned and walked down the hallway.
Fiona was about to let out a sigh of relief, but Iris’s voice stopped it.
“One more thing, Noah.”
He turned to acknowledge her with his best fuck you smile on display. “What’s that, Mrs. Matheson?”
“Did those detectives ever catch up to you?”
The smile went away. “What detectives?”
“The ones who were here looking for you last night. I heard they wanted to talk about Donald Tisdale.”
“Is that what you heard?” Noah’s hard stare fell on Fiona.
“What are you looking at her for? I’m the one who asked the question.”
Quinn began pulling on Iris’s arm. “Let’s go, mom.”
Iris pulled free of his grip, then turned back to Noah. “You’re not going to intimidate anyone else around here, do you understand? Not me, not Fiona, and certainly not that innocent little girl. One of these days, you’ll finally be exposed for the terrible human being that you are. And if it takes those detectives knocking on your door every single day to find that out for themselves, I’ll make sure they have a reason to come back here every single day.”
“Looks to me like I’m the only one being intimidated here,” Noah said smugly. “I don’t hear Quinn saying that I intimidate him.” He looked at Fiona. “I don’t hear you saying it either. Of course, your issue is that you have trouble minding your own business. But I thought we’d hashed that out already. I guess I was wrong.”
Fiona knew that he was talking about her confrontation with Natalie, but she refused to add fuel to this already raging fire by speaking on it.
“All I’m doing is defending my family’s integrity,” Noah continued. “If you consider that being intimidating, well, I think you’re all being a little too sensitive.”
“Just heed my words, Noah Glasby,” Iris said sharply.
Noah nodded his head in mock deference. “Yes, ma’am. Your threats are heeded. Again, you folks have a wonderful day.” Without saying anything else, he turned down the hallway toward the elevator. He glanced back at the group as he rounded the corner, still smiling.
Iris immediately directed her ire at Quinn. “What do you think you’re doing, befriending that psychopath?” she asked, jabbing him with a hard elbow.
“I just said hi to the guy a couple of times. I didn’t think it was a big deal.”
“Well it is a big deal. You’ve been around here long enough to know what kind of people they are. They’re not stable, neither one of them, and I don’t want you associating with them in any way, shape, or form. You got me?”
Iris was scolding this grown man like he was a seven-year-old child. And for the briefest of moments, Quinn played the part.
“Fine. I got you.” He cowered under the weight of his mother’s rebuke. Fiona felt sorry for him, but she quickly realized that she probably would have reacted the same way if it were her son.
“Now can we please get to the store? I don’t want to have crowds to contend with, especially after this nonsense.”
Quinn’s broad shoulders slumped as he started down the hallway. He didn’t acknowledge Fiona as he passed.
“I’m sorry for all of that,” Iris said as she put a gentle hand on Fiona’s shoulder.
“No problem,” she replied, suddenly feeling intimidated herself. She had been caught off guard by Iris’s intensity, but she also felt gratitude that the intensity had been used in her defense.
“Are you going to be okay here?”
“I’ll be fine. I have some errands to run today, so I’ll be busy out in the world.”
“Good. The last thing you need to do is stay cooped up in here. I should give you my cell phone number in case you need me while I’m out. Let me grab a pen. I think I have one on that table near the door. Hold tight.” She took a hurried step toward her apartment before Fiona stopped her.
“Not necessary, Iris. I’m okay. You need to run along so you can beat the rush.”
The thought was enough for Iris to abandon her pursuit. “You’re right. I should get going. I still need to talk some sense into that rock-headed son of mine anyway. Take care, sweetheart.”
“You too.”
She watched as Iris and Quinn shuffled off toward the elevator. Iris spoke to him in a hushed but stern tone. Fiona could only thank the heavens that it wasn’t her on the receiving end of those words.
Before she could walk back into her apartment, she heard the muted sound of applause coming from 607. Random outbursts of numbers followed the applause. “Six-seventy-five”, “Five-hundred”, “Eight-fifty”. Rising above the outbursts, a female voice declared her own number. “I’m gonna go with eight-fifty.”
More applause as the male game show host repeated the number, “Eight-fifty.” A loud ding confirmed the number. “And the actual retail price is…”
Before Fiona could hear the number, her attention shifted to something else. Another voice. This one more familiar.
“Why would you do that?”
At first, Fiona thought that Natalie was simply protesting the game show contestant’s bid. Then she said something else.
“I don’t know how many times I can tolerate having this conversation with you. Don’t talk to people you don’t know.”
Fiona heard nothing in response, just the annoying jingle of a dishwashing detergent commercial.
“But nothing,” Natalie continued. “You don’t speak. You listen. Got it?”
Fiona edged closer to the door, careful to avoid the peephole. The background noise of the television dissolved into nothing as she tuned her ear to the frequency of Natalie’s voice.
“You don’t know that woman. She could be a danger to you, to us.”
Silence.
“I don’t care if you think she’s nice. I’ve talked to her, and so has Noah, and I can promise you she isn’t nice.”
Fiona didn’t need an advanced degree to know that Natalie was talking about her. She felt angry that someone with such a horrible disposition would have the nerve to judge her character, but she let it go, focusing instead on what she hoped would be the sound of Olivia’s voice. Despite Natalie’s continued dialogue, Fiona never heard it.
She must be on a cell phone call¸ she quickly concluded. Perhaps Natalie wasn’t lying when she said that Olivia was away. It would explain the one-way conversation anyway. Unfortunately, it would leave many other things unexplained.
“Is there anything else you need to say? Or have I finally made myself clear?”
Silence.
“I’m glad you understand. Just make sure we don’t have to talk about this again, okay?”
Fiona took a step toward her apartment in ant
icipation of Natalie ending the phone call.
“Now go to your room and lay down for a while. If you’re too sick to go to school, you’re too sick to be up watching television. I’ll make breakfast soon.”
Fiona saw strobes of white-hot pulsating light in her immediate field of vision; fear so potent that it manifested itself in physical form.
“We don’t have pancakes. You can have cereal, like you always do.”
Silence as Natalie listened to a response that Fiona could not hear.
“Whatever. Do you know how many children in the world would kill for a handful of dried rice? Let alone that bowl of refined sugar you call breakfast? Be thankful for what you have. No more arguing about it. Just go, and I’ll call you when it’s ready.”
All Fiona could hear after that was the exuberant screams of game show contestants as they clamored for the double-wide hot tub that none of them would ever be able to use.
She walked back into her apartment on wobbly legs, barely making it to the kitchen counter to retrieve her phone before she collapsed in an exhausted heap on her futon.
“Please God, please let it work.” Fiona closed her eyes and silently repeated the prayer before turning on her cell phone. She smiled at the sight of five signal bars. Full strength. “I owe you one,” she said with a look to the sky. In reality, it was far more than one, but she’d stopped counting years ago. She hoped He had too.
Fiona never got around to storing Paul Riley’s contact information in her phone, so she had to manually dial his number. Her hands shook so violently that she misdialed three times before finally connecting. After being informed of her call by his assistant – the young, sharply-dressed kid she’d met a few days ago – Paul answered on the first ring.
“Good morning, Fiona. How are you?” Unlike their last conversation, his voice came through loud and clear.
“Not good, Paul. Not good at all.”
“What’s the matter? Did something happen?”
“Yes.”
“Tell me.”
“I can’t. Not here. Would it be possible to stop by your office sometime today?”
“I have an open hour between ten-thirty and eleven-thirty.”
“Great. I’ll be there.”
“Okay, but can you give me at least a hint of what it is you want to talk about?”
Fiona’s hesitation at saying the words aloud compelled her to whisper them. “I may need some legal advice outside of my custody situation.”
“What kind of advice?”
“Advice on what my rights are as a tenant, and how I can protect myself if I’m forced to break my lease early.”
“I’m sorry, but I’m not understanding.”
Fiona attempted to answer, but choked on the words as a giant knot formed in her throat.
“Are you okay, Fiona? Your kind of freaking me out here.”
She composed herself long enough to force out the nine words that she had repeated in her mind since the first night she moved in; words that, up until this very second, she hoped she would never have to act on.
“I can’t spend one more night in this apartment.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
“TENANT RIGHTS ISN’T EXACTLY MY AREA of legal expertise,” Paul Riley said as he and Fiona entered his office. “But I was able to research the potential options that someone in your situation might have.”
“And?”
“Unfortunately, you don’t have many.”
Fiona’s heart sank. “Are you saying that I’m stuck there?”
“No one can force you to stay. You can leave the apartment anytime you want. But if you leave before the lease expires, it’s going to cost you a lot of time and money, neither of which you can afford to lose.”
“But I read somewhere that exceptions can be made for unsafe living conditions. That place is not safe.”
“That particular provision only applies if the building itself is unsafe. Say, for instance, the heat stops working in the dead of winter and the landlord refuses to fix it. That qualifies as an unsafe living condition. Structural deficiencies are another one.”
“What about bat-shit crazy neighbors? Is there a provision in the state code for that?”
Paul started to smile, but wisely pushed it back. “I’m afraid not.”
“So what the hell am I supposed to do?”
“Have you brought the issue up with your landlord?”
Fiona shook her head. “He’s got bigger problems right now. My personal comfort is probably on the bottom of his priority list.”
“Yeah, I read about what happened. They’re saying it was a suicide, right?”
“I don’t think they know any more than you or I do.”
“Well, I still don’t think it would hurt to give your landlord a call. At the very least, he can talk to your neighbors, maybe offer some kind of conflict resolution.”
“These aren’t the kind of people that respond to conflict resolution. Besides, it isn’t just the neighbors.”
“What else is it?”
“Strange things are happening there.”
“In your apartment?”
Fiona nodded, unsure if she was ready to say more.
“Give me an example.”
“Just one?”
“Is there more than one?”
Fiona nodded again.
“Okay, start with the worst.”
“Well, aside from the fact that a man was most likely killed in an apartment no less than five hundred feet from mine, I think the building may be haunted.”
Paul’s eyes widened. “Say that again?”
“I can’t speak for the entire building, but I can say for sure that my apartment is.”
The smile that Paul had successfully suppressed before was now on full display, more the result, Fiona suspected, of nervousness than amusement. “What leads you to believe that?”
Fiona ran a blow by blow of each unexplained event that occurred since she moved in, from the pictures, to the strange thumping noises, to the conversations with Olivia, to the voice that called her name this morning.
“I know how it all sounds,” she said in response to Paul’s furrowed brow of skepticism. “Trust me, if it wasn’t for the stories that my next-door neighbor Iris told me, I would have dismissed it as complete bullshit too.”
“Does Iris think your apartment is haunted?”
“No, she thinks it’s cursed.”
Paul shook his head. “Jesus, you do need to get out of there. It sounds like you’re surrounded by a bunch of loons.”
“I can’t dispute that. But I also can’t dispute what I’ve personally witnessed.”
“And the girl, Olivia. Is she the same one who you heard crying a few nights ago?”
“I can’t be one-hundred percent sure, but I think so.”
“And you’ve had several conversations with her since then, but you still haven’t seen her?”
“I thought I saw her in her apartment when I was talking to her mother, but she insisted that Olivia was away visiting her father.”
“Do you think you’ve been talking to a ghost then?”
Fiona had never once considered that option, but now that she had, it wasn’t so easy to dismiss. “I don’t know what to believe about that place, Paul. That’s the entire reason I need to leave. If she is a ghost, if she isn’t a ghost, either way, the situation is seriously fucked and I don’t want any part of it.”
“But you told me that you fear for her safety.”
“I do.”
“If she’s real.”
This exchange was beginning to feel more like a cross-examination than a conversation. “Why do I get the feeling you don’t believe me?”
“It doesn’t matter whether I believe it. What matters is that you believe it. I’m just trying to figure out why.”
Fiona tensed. “I didn’t realize I was paying for a lawyer and a therapist.”
“I’m no therapist, Fiona.”
; “Well then why are you acting like one? I didn’t come here to have you analyze my experience. I came here to get advice about my lease.”
“And I provided that. But you’ve said some things that are frankly a little troubling, and as your lawyer, it’s my job to understand your state of mind at all times, so that when it comes time for a deposition, I’m not blindsided by some attack on you by Kirk’s lawyer.”
“What kind of an attack?”
“An attack on your mental and emotional stability.”
Fiona nearly fell out of her chair. “Are you implying that I’m somehow mentally or emotionally unstable?”
“No, but if what you’re telling me ever becomes part of a public record, and it will if these are the conditions under which you break your lease, you can bet that Kirk’s lawyer will imply it. Unfortunately, with your track record, it wouldn’t take much for the court to side with him.”
“I can’t believe what I’m hearing right now.”
“I’m sorry to be the one to break it to you, but as your lawyer, that is my job.”
“So, this is you’re not-so-subtle way of telling me to stay in that hell-hole apartment.”
“Absolutely, at least until a custody decision has been rendered. You’ve only been here for a week, yet you’ve already found an apartment, joined an A.A. group, and are well on your way to finding a job. That will speak volumes to the court about your readiness and commitment. What do you think it would say if you break your lease after one week because you think that ghosts are running your apartment building? Do you think the courts would still consider you ready and committed? Not a chance in hell. And what would be the end result? Everything you’ve worked so hard to build would go to shit. Gone in an instant.”
Fiona was so angry that she hadn’t felt the tears streaming down her face until she saw them dot her blouse. She wiped them away with the back of her hand, not bothering to reach for the box of tissue on Paul’s desk.
“Can I ask you something else?” Paul asked in a solemn tone.
“Why not?” she responded, thinking that he couldn’t possibly say anything worse than he already had.
She was wrong.
“How have you been coping since the meeting with Kirk? I know it was painful.”