Dangerous Past

by Cobe Reinbold

  “It’s locked.” We had worked so hard and stayed up so late to get here, and now the stupid thing wouldn’t let us in.

  “Let me see,” Jessica said. I stepped aside, out of her way. She tried the handle with no more success than I had. Undeterred, she started searching the area near the door.

  Jessica reached above the door and started to feel the top of the frame. If a key had been there at some point the wind and rain had washed it away. If we couldn’t find a key I was planning to run full speed into the door until it broke down.

  Just as I considered the plan, Jessica made a small triumphant noise. She brought her arm down and turned with a small silver key in her hand. She held it out to me. I think they understood it would have killed me if I didn’t go first. I took the key and stood glaring at the door like it was the enemy. I had no idea what was behind the door. For all I knew, Mady’s body might be there, and then what? Tell the cops my girlfriend didn’t kill herself in the river, she did it in a cabin deep in the woods, and we just happened to stumble upon her body at three in the morning? I didn’t think that story would fly.

  Taking a deep breath, I slid the key into the lock. It fit like a glove and I was surprised that there was no resistance from the old lock. I turned the key, and then the handle, the door swung wide open.

  The first good sign was it didn’t smell like rotting flesh. No, actually the scent in the small building was pleasant. Mady’s familiar scent was everywhere in the room. I had to fight hard to keep the tears at bay.

  The wood floor was warped and there was a small wood burning stove for heat on the back wall. I wouldn’t even call the place a house or building. It was more like a room that housed all your needs, without being crowded. There was a cot on the wall to the right of us, with bedding thrown over it. It didn’t look like there was any sort of running water or toilet. It was quaint. Somewhere nice to relax on a cold winter day with a fire in the wood stove as the snow blew past outside. I still didn’t get why she picked this place. I checked the time: 3:30 A.M. We didn’t have long. I had to be home by 5:00 since Mom got up at 6:00.

  The only other thing in the room was a writing desk on the wall near the wood stove. From the condition of the stove I doubted it had been used in decades. It gave the room a kind of homey feel, though. I hesitated on the threshold, this was the only place that was all Mady’s. She was probably the only person who’d been in this place for years. It felt like a desecration of her memory to enter the cabin.

  Maybe she never wanted me to find this place. Well, it was too late now. We were here.

  I took a step in, the floor creaking and shrieking under my weight. I took another tentative step. This place was smaller than my bedroom. Who would ever want to live here? I took another step and stood in the middle of the room. It was all so neat and tidy. The kettle sat on top of the stove, the cot was made up with fresh white sheets. There was even wood in the stove. It all seemed too perfect, just like Mady would have liked it. Except for one thing — prominently placed on the otherwise empty desk was an envelope with a blue wax seal on it.

  My heart hammered in my chest as I forced myself to cross over to the envelope on the desk. Please let it be addressed to me. Please. My friends hovered in the doorway. My hand quivered so hard I fumbled with the paper as I picked it up. The thundering of the pulse in my ears was so loud I was sure my friends could hear it clear across the small room. The letters on the pristine paper blurred and I blinked to clear my vision. Big, bold, swirling letters spelled out Brian. I picked it up gingerly, almost like it might burn me and my friends. They looked stunned but stayed where they were. I glanced back at the envelope rattling in my hand and started to open it. Hesitating, I looked to my friends for guidance but the doorway was empty.

  They wouldn’t be far. I could find them in a minute. I slipped my finger under the seal, the blue wax popped off leaving the lip of the letter open. I took a couple deep breaths to calm myself, but my hands wouldn’t stop shaking. I pulled out the folded paper. Mady’s scent clung to the letter. It brought back so many memories, for a moment I thought I might faint. I couldn’t back out now. I unfolded the letter and stood holding the last thing Mady left me. Her printing swirled in elegant letters sprawling across the page.

  I’m sorry

  Dear Brian,

  I need to start this by saying I’m sorry. I’m sorry for putting you through all of this, but it was necessary. I know I should have told you how much trouble I was in, but I didn’t want to worry you. I was worried it was going to ruin our relationship, and I just wanted to hold onto you for as long as I could. But, if you’re reading this letter then I’m most likely dead. I know it’s hard to hear, but I am. Brian, I need your help more than ever. Someone found me from the blog posts. I don’t know who, and I tried my hardest the whole time to keep who I really was a secret. By now you will know about my past, but as soon as I put up the second post explaining who I really was, I got a notification someone was after me. A man who calls himself Metrix messaged me and told me I had been hacked. He’s a hacker himself and was intrigued with my story. He tried to dig deeper, but as soon as he got into my computer he noticed someone else had already hacked me. He helped me put on that security code you had to break, and ever since the second post, every post I made had a secret message for you. I don’t know if you’ve read all of them, but when you have things will make more sense. I’m asking you to investigate and hopefully you can find out who this person stalking me is. I know I should have abandoned the blog after I realized I was in danger, but I didn’t. For a while, Metrix and I thought I was safe. Then I started to get letters sent to my house. I’ve left a trail of bread crumbs for you to follow so that hopefully one day you can avenge my death. This way, if my stalker finds this letter he will have no idea where to find me. Unless he already has. The first clue is for you, Brian. I kept copies of every single picture we ever took in a box. I also left a copy of my suicide note in it. Go find that box and follow the instructions. Good luck, and I love you.

  My heart squeezed in my chest and I couldn’t breathe. It was like Mady was speaking in my ear and she didn’t sound happy. I had to read the letter again just to believe it was true. Mady got in trouble because of her blog posts, and maybe someone in town really did know who she was. How could someone ever want to harm her? She was the most caring and loving person I had ever met. I had to share this with my friends; they worked just as hard as I did to find this run-down cabin.

  Clutching the letter I left the cabin, closing the door and locking it on the way out. I pushed through the brush to the main trail and spotted my friends. They were perched on rocks and fallen trees and looked up expectantly when I appeared. I joined them and handed Kent the note since he sat in the middle. He started to read it out loud, but I couldn’t listen. I went and picked up the plywood with the vines still clinging to it and replaced it. I wasn’t sure if I would ever come back here and wanted to leave it just like Mady had.

  I wandered back to the group as Kent finished reading the letter. They all looked intrigued and I was sure they would help me with whatever Mady wanted me to do.

  “Well, you know what this means. We have to find those photos and figure out what she wanted you to find.” Jason was the first to speak and I felt a rush of affection for his support.

  I swallowed, shook my head and started to walk back the way we came. My brain was now officially fried and all I could think about was getting home before Mom woke up. Jason, Jessica, and Kent caught up with me and trailed behind in silence. Without remembering how I got there, suddenly I in the driver seat of the car.

  Jessica and Kent got into his truck, waving goodbye to me. Jason hopped into my passenger seat, and I backed out down the long dirt lane. Once I was on the main road I tromped on the gas. The speed seemed to release some of the tension coiled like a spring in my gut. I got us to Jason’s in five minutes. He jumped out and promised to text me. I started to drive away but a flash in my rear vi
ew mirror halted me. Jason was running after me with something in his hands. I stopped and rolled down the window, he came even with me and Mady’s note fluttered into my lap.

  I rolled up the window and punched the gas. I was late and I was worried I’d get caught. I didn’t really have a plan. Getting out of the house was a planned and well-rehearsed dance. Getting back in was a little trickier. Somehow, I had to get the car back into the garage without being noticed, and then get up to my room without waking Mom.

  The front door was always an option but if Dad ever played the security tapes, he would see me coming in at an ungodly hour of the morning. It was 4:30 when I got to the end of the drive. I didn’t have long. I cut the engine just like I had before and rolled as far as the hill would let me, which wasn’t very far, and when the incline was too steep for the car to roll up itself I was forced to get out and push it all the way into the garage. I had left the door open to avoid the noise of it closing and I would only have to risk opening it again when I got back. I rolled into the garage and closed the door as quietly as possible and reactivated the electronic control before I slipped out the side door, locking it behind me.

  It was easier than I expected to get back in. I crept into the house and up the stairs to my bedroom. I changed into my pajamas and wadded my filthy clothes into a ball. I pulled the laptop out from under my bed and turned it on. I pulled up her blog and scrolled to the last one I read. It was the third one, I kept scrolling until the fourth one came up. The post was there, but superimposed over the text was a blurred box ‘locked’ blinking in the middle of it. I was locked out of Mady’s blog. How did that happen?

  Chapter 9

  Getting locked out of the blog just didn’t make sense. Mady left me the laptop so I could read her posts. The sun burning through my window hadn’t awoken me until noon and now I sat in the kitchen wolfing down a bowl of cereal. I didn’t sleep much when I got home rom the sawmill, not giving in until the early hours of the morning. I tried to get onto the website on my own computer, as well as my phone. Neither of them could find the website, and instead just loaded a white screen. It made no sense. Why would Mady show me a small bit of the blog, and then somehow shut it down so I couldn’t read the rest? Maybe the blog wasn’t even hers? If she really was dead how could she take it down

  I had to find the suicide note and figure out what Mady wanted me to do with it. Maybe if I could do that I could make sense of everything. But looking for the photos and note didn’t seem to matter anymore. I thought the blog would let me solve Mady’s death, but now I couldn’t access it. I had an appointment with Nancy Kim at one o’clock, which was the only reason I even got out of bed. I couldn’t let her see I was obsessing about Mady again. I was, but I couldn’t admit it to her. She’d tell me to stop trying to figure this out, and I just couldn’t do that. It was the last thing Mady ever asked of me, and I wasn’t about to let her down.

  I finished my cereal and went over to the garage. Mom woke me up before leaving for work to say goodbye, and she hadn’t mentioned anything about the night before. So far, so good. I hopped in my car and drove to my appointment. I made it there by one, and went up to the door to knock. Nancy was sitting outside on her front porch drinking a cup of coffee. She greeted me with a large smile.

  “Hi, Brian,” she said, in that warm voice I loved, but was also afraid of at times.

  “Hey, Nancy,” I responded, taking a seat in the deck chair next to her.

  “Long night last night?” Of course Nancy could tell I was tired. She was trained to read people, and I wasn’t exactly good at hiding my feelings.

  “Couldn’t sleep.”

  “That’s not true.” Nancy always called me out when she knew I was lying about something. In a way it was nice, but it also made it harder to talk to her.

  “If I tell you, you’ll want me to stop. That might be a good idea the way things are going right now, but I just can’t.”

  “I can’t make you do anything, Brian. I can advise you, but I can’t tell you what to do. If I think you’re going to hurt yourself then, yeah, I’m obligated to tell your parents.”

  Whenever I have a session with Nancy I half expect to tell her about the laptop and everything. She’s good at pulling information out of people, and it wasn’t too hard to get me to break. I found myself telling her how I snuck out the night before and found Mady’s secret place. I mentioned the letter she left, and how when I got home and checked the blog, the rest of the posts were locked. That’s what bugged me the most. It was hard to read about Mady being scared and then getting shut out of the rest of the story. Even if she was gone, it felt wrong to only be able to read part of the story. I wanted to know what happened and understand why she left.

  “I get it Brian, but remember what I told you last time we talked. Don’t let this take over your life, and by the sounds of it, it’s very quickly becoming an obsession.”

  “I just don’t know how to deal with this. How can Mady still be such a big part of my life?”

  “Sometimes, when people die they begin to occupy a more prominent place in our lives. When the grief is new, everyone cares for the first week or two. As time goes on, the only people left picking up the pieces are the ones who were really close with the deceased.”

  “I’ve just never had anyone I was so close to die before.” I sighed. No matter how much time went by, whenever I thought about Mady it hurt.

  I left Nancy Kim’s office and was on my way home when I realized what I needed to do. I checked that there were no cars around me, and pulled a U-turn in the middle of the road. Within minutes I was pulling up to Mady’s house. I ran up to the door and knocked urgently. I had to keep on going. I had to follow the trail and hope Mady wouldn’t put me in danger.

  Moments later Mrs. Smith opened the door. It was two in the afternoon on a Tuesday, and Mady’s mom was still in her pajamas.

  “Hi, Brian,” she said, as if me showing up to her house unannounced was a common occurrence. I wondered just how hard Mady’s death had been on her.

  “Hi, Mrs. Smith. I think I still have a hoodie in Mady’s closet, and I was wondering if I could pick it up.”

  “Of course, Brian. You go on up. You know the way.” Mady’s mom stepped aside. She didn’t follow me upstairs like I was worried she would. She stood at the bottom of the stairs with a lost expression on her face. I hoped one of my hoodies was still in Mady’s room. I came up with the story on the way over as a way to get into her room. I needed to come back with something in my hands.

  As soon as I got into the room I shut the door and walked over to the bed. Memories flooded back, but I couldn’t let myself get distracted now. I knelt and searched under the bed. The letter indicated there was a copy of the note in the box where she kept all of our photos. I knew where she kept it since every time we took a new one I waited as she printed it off and added it to her collection.

  The box wasn’t there. The police must have found it. If they had, they would have taken out the extra suicide note as evidence and even if Mady’s parents had the box back now, they would have stored it in a different place. Darn it all! I had to find that box, and hopefully the note was still in it.

  I stood up and flopped onto her bed and tried to stop the tears of frustration. What was I doing following instructions left by my dead girlfriend before she killed herself? How messed up was that?

  For a moment, I felt entirely alone and everything seemed so pointless. I pounded on the mattress letting my anger and frustration take over. After a particularly violent punch something dropped with a small thud under the bed. Oh shit! I broke the frame. Her parents are going to so kill me.

  I got up stretched out on the floor and peered under the bed to see the damage. Directly under the headboard was a shoe box decorated with glue-on flowers and paint. It was where she kept every single momento of our relationship. She must have fixed it to the bottom of her bed. The good news was that since Mady had hidden the box, her parents probably ha
d no clue it existed, meaning they wouldn’t miss it when I took the suicide note.

  I slid the box out and opened it. The smell of her perfume hitting me like a brick to the head. On top of the countless pictures was the note. I put it in my pants pocket and slid the box back under the bed. I went to the cupboard hoping I’d find my hoodie. My heart leapt when I discovered the one I got when I made the football team. I never really cared much about sports, but at the beginning of grade 10 the coaches came and recruited me. They convinced me to try out for the team, and I thought it would look good on my university application. Mady loved the idea of dating a football player, and flaunted the hoodie whenever we were together.

  I grabbed it off the rack, threw it over my arm and proceeded to rush down the stairs. I popped my head into the living room to say goodbye to Mrs. Smith. I assured her I could let myself out. I hurried down the walk, threw the hoodie on the passenger seat and drove away.

  When I got home I headed straight to my bedroom. Now I had the note maybe I could unlock the blog and continue reading. I held the note in my hand, hesitant to open it. I decided to call my friends, it would be easier to read Mady’s note if I wasn’t alone.

  I called Jason, Jessica, and Kent, and they promised they’d be over as soon as possible. I toyed with the folded note. I didn’t want to read it yet. Now I had the note in my hands I was afraid of what I’d find when I read it. I almost wished I’d never found it in the first place. As curious as I was, I almost didn’t want to be part of this at all, and was starting to wish I was never dragged into this situation.

  The note looked normal. It was just a page of writing, and it didn’t even fill the whole page. How could a young girl’s final words only fill half a sheet of paper?