by Neil Davies
He wasn’t there.
“You’ve got to be kidding me!”
She examined the beach scene under the magnifying glass. The families, the sunbathers, the swimmers. But no man in a business suit. No wide-brimmed hat tugged down over the eyes.
Could she have imagined it? Surely not. She had seen him. She knew she had seen him.
She looked closer, harder at where she felt he had been standing on the beach and shuddered.
There, on the sand, were two large, heavy footprints.
“I’m telling you he was there and now he’s not!”
Karen, mouth half-full of hotdog, spat the last word out, along with a spray of food.
Jackie glanced at her friend as they walked away from the fast food stand, back towards the office building where Jackie worked. She was worried. She knew Karen had been struggling a little lately with work not coming in as fast as she wanted it to. She knew the whole issue with that bastard Steven had knocked her into a downward spiral. But she had never imagined she would become delusional.
“You do realise that what you’re saying just isn’t possible?”
“It happened.”
“People do not just get up and walk out of one picture and into another.”
Karen shrugged, not wanting to discuss any further whether it was possible or not. She knew what she had seen.
“Listen.” Jackie stopped and placed a hand on her friend’s arm. “There’s a few of us going out tonight. Why don’t you come along? It’ll be fun. It’s ages since you’ve been out on the town.”
Karen shook her head and gently pulled her arm free.
“I’m not ready for a night parading myself around the clubs looking for men. Not yet.”
“You make us sound like sluts!”
They paused, looking at each other, before both broke out into laughter.
For a moment neither could speak, until the laughter subsided a little. Karen wiped tears from the corners of her eyes.
“Thanks for the offer though. Seriously, I couldn’t afford it, and I really don’t want to put myself in the firing line with men again.”
“Karen, you look good. I mean, even when you dress down you look good! You put yourself in the firing line every time you walk out the door.”
Karen smiled. “Thanks. And thanks for pointing out I’ve ‘dressed down’ today, as you put it! Go back to work and stop worrying about me. I’ll be fine.”
Jackie checked her watch and started to hurry away.
“I’ll call you later, ok?”
Karen waved and waited until her friend had disappeared into her office block, then she turned to start a long, slow walk home.
She stopped. Her stomach clenched. Her heart seemed to pound in her ears.
The man in the suit and wide-brimmed hat stood at the corner, watching her through eyes hidden by the hat’s shadow.
That afternoon, as she sat on the edge of her bed, shivering, trembling, she tried to convince herself she had imagined it.
One moment he was there, the next he had ducked behind the building. She had only hesitated a moment before running forward, almost skidding around the corner, but he was nowhere in sight.
Imagination? Hallucination? Madness?
She pressed the palms of her hands against her face and cried, heavy, shoulder shaking sobs.
What’s happening to me? He was real. But he couldn’t be!
She forced herself to stand up, willed her legs to move, to walk out of the bedroom and to her desk. She had been avoiding this since she got back to her apartment, but she knew she had to look.
The two photographs were pinned side by side on the corkboard, both slightly askew, the corner of one overlapping the other.
For a moment, her eyes would not rise that far. They stayed fixed firmly on the desktop as if looking for something there. But there was nothing there she wanted to find. It was fear that was stopping her looking higher. Fear of confirming what she knew to be true.
I have to do it. I have to know.
She looked up, first at the beach scene. Only those vague footprints remained to show the man had ever been there.
Next, the street argument.
She looked at the watching crowd. There was no business suit, no wide-brimmed hat.
He had disappeared!
She felt dizzy, nauseous. Her fingers trembled as she raised them up to touch the two photographs, as if needing the physical contact to know they were real. But she wasn’t surprised. She hadn’t expected him to be there anymore.
How could he still be in the world of the photograph when he was there, in her world?
The first note appeared the next day.
She found it pinned to the outside of her apartment door, written in faint, spidery handwriting on a page torn from the kind of notebook available in every newsagent in the city.
FOUND YOU.
There was no signature.
Shaking, glancing nervously along the corridor, she tore the note from the door, the tape holding it ripping a layer of paint away. She screwed the paper into a ball and threw it in the bin just inside her apartment.
She tried to tell herself Steven was playing some kind of sick joke. Or he’d split up with her ex-best friend and was hoping to come back. But deep inside, pushing at the edge of her deepest fears, she knew who the note was from.
She told no one.
The second note was pushed under her apartment door a day later as she bathed.
She saw it as she stepped into the living room, naked expect for the towel wrapped turban-like around her wet hair. It lay on the carpet, white with faint blue lines. Folded in two.
She grabbed up her bathrobe from the back of a chair and pulled it on hurriedly. Her nakedness made her feel vulnerable, self-conscious, as if whoever had left the note could see through her apartment door.
She stepped towards the note, hesitated. Could he still be outside? Waiting for her to get near? Waiting to grab her?
She quickly checked the locks. She could see the security chain was in place, the Yale lock was on, even the ugly black bolt Steven had put on for her after a series of robberies in other apartments nearby was slid across. There was no way anyone was going to suddenly open that door and grab her.
Still, she was hesitant, nervous, as she approached it. Her eyes never left the door.
She picked up the note and retreated quickly back into the middle of the room.
For a moment she considered just throwing the note away, never opening it, never reading it. But she knew she had to read it. Maybe she was wrong and it was from Jackie, or some other friend? Someone who came to the door while she was in the bath and, not getting an answer to their knocking and ringing, decided to slip a note under instead?
Maybe she was letting her fears and insecurities get the better of her.
It’s just a piece of paper!
She opened it.
The handwriting was stronger, bolder.
WATCHING YOU.
Her fingers loosened and the paper fluttered to the floor, lying open on the carpet, the words screaming up at her ashen face.
The doorbell rang.
She snapped her head up, towards the sound.
My God, he’s out there!
It stopped ringing. It rang again. Stopped. Rang. Short, sharp rings continuing on and on until her head reverberated with the sound.
And as the ringing continued, the hammering started. The hammering of heavy fists on the door, bang bang bang, again and again. The door shook on its hinges with each blow, the locks rattling, the bolt jerking as if it would break free.
She slammed her hands over her ears, closed her eyes, fell to her knees and screamed.
She was still screaming when the banging and the ringing stopped. It had only lasted for fifteen seconds at the longest, but she felt it had always been there, filling her head, clawing at her heart and her stomach.
She was still screaming when her neighbours called the police.
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They had to break the door down to get to her.
She returned to her apartment two weeks later, calmed by drugs, reasoned with by experts.
“Are you sure you’ll be ok?”
Jackie stood with her outside the apartment door, concern threatening to furrow her recently botoxed brow.
Karen forced a smile. “I’ll be fine.”
She had found her stay in the hospital frightening at first, each doctor, each nurse, each visitor seeming to wear a business suit and wide-brimmed hat. Later, she had relaxed. She felt safe surrounded by the hospital staff. And there were no photographs around her bed.
Now she felt better, recovered. She had accepted their explanations of stress, delusions, imagination.
The police had shared her first suspicion about the notes. That they could have come from Steven. She knew they had questioned him. She did not know if anything came of it.
One psychologist had suggested she wrote the notes herself, as part of her reaction to the stress she was facing.
She doubted that.
Nevertheless, she felt safe enough to return to her own apartment. Steven would send no more notes, having been warned off by the police. She felt it was time to return home and to her normal life.
She lifted the key towards the lock, hesitated and turned to her friend.
“Maybe you could just come inside for a minute or two?”
Check there’s no one there.
Jackie glanced at her watch and smiled.
“Of course I can. Listen, I’d have taken the day off if I’d known you were coming out today. I’m really sorry I’ve got to get back to work.”
“That’s ok. I understand.” She took a deep breath and pushed the key into the lock, turning it slowly, almost reluctantly. “And thanks for fixing the door.”
The door had been repaired. She knew Jackie had paid for that. It opened smoothly.
For a moment she thought about asking Jackie to go in first, but then, with the same stubborn resolution she had used when starting out in business on her own, she stepped into the darkness, her hand scrabbling for the light switch.
She breathed a sigh of relief as light flooded the living room. Everything seemed as she remembered it, and the familiarity helped calm her.
“I’ll have to just do a quick check and then get going,” said Jackie, following Karen into the apartment.
She hurried from door to door, turning the lights on in the bedroom, the bathroom. Karen wanted to ask her to check under the bed, in the shower cubicle, but she couldn’t bring herself to look such a coward.
Jackie came back to the living room, smiling.
“All clear.” She took Karen’s hands in hers. “I’m really sorry I’ve got to rush. Lock the door after I’ve gone. You’ll be fine here, and I’ll call round straight after work. Ok?”
Karen nodded and forced another smile.
“Thanks. You’d better get going. Can’t have both of us without a job.”
Jackie leaned forward and kissed her on the cheek.
“See you later.”
Karen followed her as far as the door and then, with a final wave, closed it behind her hurrying friend. She turned and locked the Yale, slid the new bolts across, top and bottom now, and hooked the new security chain in place.
She walked slowly through the living room, a slight smile on her face, her first genuine smile since returning. Her nervousness, the remnant of her fear, was retreating. No one had been waiting for her, hiding in the darkness. She had known they wouldn’t be, of course. Too many experts had explained how that man could never have existed except in her own mind for her to think anything else. But fear didn’t think, and she had needed to see the empty apartment for that to finally fade.
It was good to be back. Good to be feeling normal again.
For a moment she did not move, just stood in the centre of her apartment with her eyes closed and her head back, savouring the freedom from the hospital and, more importantly, the freedom from her fear.
But there was something she needed to do to bring closure to the whole, dreadful incident.
She walked to her desk. She needed to take those photographs down from the corkboard. They would do her no good staring at her every time she needed to work. She would throw them away. She would not even look at them.
She reached the desk, leant forward towards the corkboard and stared at the notepaper pinned alongside the photographs, strong, thick letters scrawled upon it.
GOT YOU!
She wanted to scream, opened her mouth to do so, but no sound came out. The trembling returned to her body, the fear to her heart. She clutched the edge of the desk to stop herself falling.
He was real. And he had been in her apartment!
Something dark covered her eyes and she blacked out.
It was Jackie who phoned the police that evening.
She returned to the apartment after work, just as she promised, but there was no answer.
She didn’t believe Karen would have gone out alone, and she stood and hammered and rang long enough to wake anyone who might be sleeping. Several of Karen’s tired and irritated neighbours could attest to that.
Given Karen’s recent history, the police had shared her concern.
Jackie followed the police in, searching the empty rooms. She found Karen’s desk, the corkboard. She stared at the photographs. At the beach scene.
At the man standing incongruously on the sand wearing a black, double-breasted business suit and wide-brimmed hat pulled down over his eyes. He was smiling, his teeth white and sharp in the darkness of his face. His hand lay heavily on the shoulder of a small, slender young woman. She stood just in front of him, head bowed, shoulder length black hair covering her face. Hanging from one limp hand by the strap of its carrying case was a camera.
It was Jackie’s turn to scream!
THE PERFECT MARRIAGE
3rd March, 11:30pm
I don’t think I can pinpoint exactly when I decided to kill my wife.
You see, I think it’s an idea that’s been growing for some time, an idea whose time has come so to speak. All couples argue, true. All couples hate each other at times, also true. But when it gets to the stage we’re at now, where how I feel about her is so strong, so overwhelming, so hateful….well, murder seems the best way out of things.
I know what you’re thinking. Why not divorce like other couples do? Why go to this extreme?
Without going into details let me say one word. Money.
Ok, some details then. For a start I doubt she’d give me a divorce. She relies too much on my salary. Second, I couldn’t afford a divorce. The way this country is she’d get more of my money than I would.
No, sorry. My mind’s made up. Like I say, don’t know exactly when it happened but it’s happened.
She has to die.
5th March, 10:45pm
I hate coming home!
Work’s bad enough with people putting on me all day, but walk through the front door at the end of the day and it starts…..nagging, shouting, swearing. The house is a tip. I’m out at work all day, she’s in the house or round at her friends’ houses, so whose fault is it that the house isn’t clean? Mine of course! Everything’s my fault as far as she’s concerned.
I’ve had another day to think about it and I haven’t changed my mind. Now all I have to do is think of a way to do it.
6th March, 6:10pm
Wonder if the police can trace things back to the shops like in the movies? I bought the rat poison with cash, I’m not stupid enough to use a cheque or credit card, too easily traced. Still, I wonder how clever they are these days?
Anyway, tonight’s the night. I’ve offered to make the evening meal, something I do occasionally so she’s not suspicious about that. A good proportion of rat poison in her chicken should do the trick and I can be one grieving widower cursing the lack of care in supermarket food preparation and blaming general lack of standards for food poisoning.
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I’m shaking with the excitement. Not easy to cook like this, but I’ll manage.
8:00pm
Damn!
Just when exactly did she turn vegetarian?
I have had to sit there watching my freedom being scraped off the plate and thrown out the door. An argument followed of course. I never listened to what she said anymore! Why didn’t I take any notice of her? If I worked less and spent more time at home I’d have known she didn’t eat meat anymore!
Calm down. It’s not over yet. Time for another plan.
She must die!
7th March, 9:30am
There was a dead cat on the doorstep this morning.
Not my fault. Well, ok, maybe it is my fault a bit but how was I to know she’d throw the food out the door in a fit of pique?
Anyway, time for plan B. It’s quiet here at work at the moment, gives me time to think. I already have an idea. Electrocution.
How do I make sure I don’t get electrocuted instead? By a bit of clever mis-wiring on the vacuum cleaner of course. Her mother’s due to visit day after tomorrow which means that tomorrow she’ll be cleaning up the house because if there’s one thing we agree on it’s how irritating her mother’s “holier-than-thou” attitude towards house cleanliness is! A visit from her mother is one of the few times she does clean the house.
A chance that I might use the vacuum first? Don’t make me laugh! That’s woman’s work that is. I’m out earning money, she cleans the house….well, she should but she doesn’t. That’s one of the reasons I’m doing this!
8th March, 10:00am
It’s painful this excitement, waiting for the phone to ring, preparing myself for the performance of the century as I take the news of my wife’s demise.
Yes, I did some rewiring last night and everything’s ready to go.
Hang on. Who’s going to phone? God I’m stupid sometimes. No one will know she’s dead until I get home and “discover” the body.