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- Story Listed as: Fiction For Adults
- Theme: Horror
- Subject: Creatures & Monsters
- Published: 09/11/2020
Connected
Born 1968, M, from Kingston, Canada.jpeg)
Annie ran barefoot through the torrential rain. Lightning flared and seemed to illuminate the world.
She stopped and blinked against the fierce storm.
Had someone been chasing her?
Thick forest surrounded in all direction, the scent of wet pine and mud offered a cloying scent against her nostrils. The long nightdress she wore lay plastered against her flesh. A September breeze cut in, causing chills to rack her body. She wrapped bare arms around herself as she turned in a circle, trying to orient herself.
What was she doing out here? Had she been sleep walking?
She remembered going to bed at the motel, and now she was here, wherever here was.
She ran a wrist across her sweat soaked brow.
She gave a quick look behind her through branches and wavering leaves and spotted twinkling lights.
Must be the motel where she’d be staying. At least she hadn’t gone far.
She looked down at the ground beside what looked like a massive oak, and she saw white that seemed to gleam.
She dropped to her knees
A delicate stroke brushed away dirt from a human skull.
Lightning again lit the sky.
Two vacant eye sockets met her gaze.
Gently, she ran her fingertips over it.
Annie suddenly found herself staring up.
She lay on the wet ground, a man’s large hands around her throat.
She struggled to escape.
She couldn’t move!
The man’s knees pinned her arms to her side.
She couldn’t breathe.
She squinted against the driving rain to see his face; but the deep hood he wore over his head only further obscured his features in darker, deeper shadows.
With a quick swipe of a hand, he ripped off the necklace around her throat.
“Souvenir,” he said, letting it dangle above her. A heart shaped locket, she saw. He chuckled lowly and shoved it in his pocket.
Rough, calloused fingers tightened around her slender throat, thumbs crushing her windpipe...
Annie heard a loud crash of thunder and she was pulled back to the skull, the woods, her reality.
Shaking, she started back to the motel. She needed to call the police.
#
The Calm
Within the hour, the motel was fully alive with cruisers, officers and forensics all dressed in yellow rain slickers.
Annie stared out the huge front window from her booth in the motel diner where she sat, hands cupped around a cup of hot coffee, fatigue slowly starting to set in. It had been a long morning.
The rain had settled down to a drizzle and she watched beaded raindrops squiggle down the glass. She could spot flashlight beams playing in the woods across the road.
Chief Dylan Howard had introduced himself earlier and said they’d speak later. She watched him as he now headed toward the restaurant.
Before entering, he removed his large brimmed hat and shook water droplets from it.
His arrival was greeted by the tinkling of bells above the front door. He strode to the booth and slid in across from her, laying his hat beside him.
“Some morning,” he said.
She nodded. The waitress brought him coffee and he thanked her with a nod.
“You usually out walking this early?” he asked, looking out at the packed parking lot. “Good way to catch a cold you ask me.”
“I caught a body.”
“Right. So, ummm, you had a vision, that right?”
“I was drawn out there.”
“I see.”
By his tone she could tell he didn’t see at all.
“So, you’re what? Psychic?”
“I was just on my way to Toronto to see my folks, that’s all and… I just wanted to sleep. I’ve never had anything happen like this before, ever.”
But if she was honest with herself, hadn’t she always kind of known things before they happened? Or sensed things from certain people she couldn’t possibly know?
And hadn’t she recently had a dream that was sending her home to talk to her folks.
“You saw her die, you told the officers. Her, you said.”
“Definitely a her.”
She hadn’t mentioned how real the cold human hands around her throat had felt, constricting. The weight of the body on her chest. The face leaning over her, the face merged with shadows.
“I think it might be Lise Edwards.”
Colour drained from Chief Howard’s cheeks. “How would you know -?”
She skidded her phone along the scratched Formica tabletop. “I looked for missing girls around here and found this article from ‘98.”
He snagged her phone and sadness caused his face to droop as the grainy black and white picture stared out at him. She’d read the story twice and other articles of how 18-year-old Lise Howards had been home visiting her folks on the weekend when she disappeared sometime during the night.
The picture showed what appeared to be a school photo. Pretty girl, blond hair cascading over both shoulders, tight sweater, flawless smile beaming at the camera, heart shaped locket around her neck – like she wore in Annie’s vision - fingers delicately touching the metal. Who had been close to her heart?
Souvenir.
Annie said, “You knew her?”
He suddenly looked much older.
“Everyone in this town knew her. I went to school with her. When she disappeared it near tore this town apart. For days we searched these woods, but there was a terrible storm.”
Yes. That much was true. Raining in the vision. One in the past, one in the present.
“I don’t suppose you saw her killer’s face?” he asked.
She sighed. “No. He wore a hood and he’d pinned my arms down.”
He looked out the window again and grunted. “We all know it was Ross Vie that did it.”
Ross Vie had been mentioned in the articles she read.
She said, “That was her boyfriend, right?”
He snorted. “Not when she went missing, he wasn’t. She ended things a year before that. Her parents didn’t like the kid and they sent her away to live with her grandma. She broke it off with him. Vie didn’t like that. He was devastated. He even dropped out of school. He was eighteen.”
“Why didn’t her folks like him?”
He sighed and scratched at stubble on his neck.
“What was to like?” he said. “Vie was a bad seed. For two years they dated, and you could just see the decline in her. Her old man thought she’d grow tired of the bad boy, but it just got worse. She was acting out. Skipping school, failing tests, missing curfew, all that. Bad influence. Mismatched as two people could be. If she’d stayed, he would have ruined her. Ask anyone around at that time. Ross Vie was bad news.”
He sighed and took a sip of his coffee.
“He was goth all the way,” he continued. “Played with Ouija boards, into dark magic, the dark arts. It’s a small town, you hear things. She was a Christian girl, popular, cheerleader, loved by all who knew her. But they get together and they were inseparable. She started dressing like him too, all that black colour. He said she was a powerful psychic. What did he call it? Intense, I think it was. Yeah, intense. Almost like she was under his spell or something. Damn creepy.”
Is that why she’d been drawn to Lise? Annie wondered. Was Lise’s psychic strength reaching out from beyond the grave? “You had no proof though?” she said. “To arrest him?”
“Police had enough as far as I was concerned.”
“If he loved her, why did he kill her?”
He shrugged. “If he couldn’t have her, no one else could is my best guess.
“Vie still around?”
“He is. House painter.”
She nodded.
She glanced out the window again. Weak sunlight was struggling to break through heavy cloud cover.
She had read that Annie had been visiting her folks for a weekend when she disappeared.
“If that’s Lise out there –“ Howard said.
“It is.”
“Then this might finally be enough to nail the bastard.”
Annie said, “She saw Vie? When she came back to town?”
“People saw them together in that damn Camaro he used to drive. Last anybody saw of her.”
She nodded. And rested her eyes for a second, only to feel hard hands circling her neck, the life being choked out of her.
“You okay?” Howard asked.
Opening her eyes, back to reality, she said, “Fine. Vie admitted he saw her?”
“He admitted seeing her, yeah,” he said. “Said he dropped her off at home after their drive. All they did was talk he said.”
“But no one believed that I take it.”
“No. And it was bullshit as it turned out. They came to this very motel we found out later, spent time here. Vie changed his story fast, said she upped and disappeared before he got up. He thought she walked home herself. They weren’t supposed to be together. See how his story changed?”
She knew how it looked.
“Her folks pleaded with Vie for the truth. He gave nothing up. Way I figure it, he blamed her folks for destroying his relationship in the first place.”
It was a simple explanation, and Annie knew people killed for love all the time. Vie would be no different than others before him.
“Lise deserves justice,” she said.
“And she’ll get it. I’ll make damn sure of that.”
She stared out the window. Sheet lightning flickered on the horizon now. Angry bruised clouds gathered above the town.
She took a sip of cold coffee.
#
Dark Clouds, High Winds
When she went back to her room a short while later, she fell almost instantly asleep. Instead of Annie invading her dreams as she expected, she saw her mother holding a small child, whispering to her as she gazed out a hospital window.
It was the same dream from a few nights ago.
It was her in her mom’s arms, mere hours after she’d been born.
“It’s like a dream,” her mother whispered.
She saw her father then, as he wrapped muscular arms protectively around them both, and kissed each.
As her mother turned to go, Annie saw –
It couldn’t be!
She blinked awake.
How long had she been asleep?
Beyond the floral curtains, the world seemed to be in perpetual twilight. Wind lashed rain against the windows.
She sat on the edge of the bed and raked fingers through her dirty blond hair and watched her cell phone.
It was going to ring.
Within seconds, it did.
“Small town gossip is already running rampant,” Howards said as his hello. “Thought you might have left already. Vie wants to meet the psychic who found Lise.”
It sounded like Howard had accepted her word on the dead body’s identity.
“Vie?”
“He tried to run once we told him about the body. He didn’t get far. All we wanted to do was question him, but he’s a guilty f**ker.”
Annie took it all in.
“We told him someone found her. He wants to see her.”
“Me? Why?”
“He’ll only talk to you. Says he’ll tell you everything. You don’t have to do shit, as far as I’m concerned, but -”
“I’ll be there.”
When she arrived at the police station within a half hour, she was shown into a room with a two-way mirror. She knew Howard and a few officers watched from the other side.
Ross Vie sat across a wide metal table, looking dishevelled – mussed up hair, ripped t-shirt spattered with paint, a few scrapes on his face.
They’d arrested him at work, she remembered. He’d tried to flee. Probably tackled him.
She took a seat across from him. He blinked rapidly and shoved his glasses further up on the bridge of his nose.
“You found her?” he said. “You’re the one?”
“I did.”
“I heard the police. You were drawn to her, you saw her being killed.” He leaned forward. “You are very intense, do you know that? “
Intense? “I’m not sure I understand that.”
He cleared his throat. “Your psychic energy is like a heartbeat. It’s very intense.”
She remembered Howard saying Vie used to be into the dark arts, the occult. Obviously, he still held his beliefs.
Annie said, “The Chief said you’d tell me the truth.”
“Right, right.” Pause, deep breath, and then, “We spent the night together, like I’ve always said. She left before I woke up. We never stopped loving each other. I would never harm her.”
His arm snapped out quick and clamped on her wrist.
“Do you see the truth?” Then, he gritted his teeth. “You must see the truth?”
Anger, raw emotions flooded her. She yanked back her arm, holding it close to her chest.
She fled out into the hallway and leaned against the white cement walls. She lowered herself to the ground.
Howard met her in the hallway.
“You okay?”
“Such anger and rage –“ she stammered.
“I think we all saw that.”
But it was more than saw. She felt the raw murderous rage deep within Vie.
The way he looked at her, the eyes that locked on her for that mere second…
He was barely reining in his anger.
It had existed a long time.
He could kill, she knew.
Her head throbbed as she left the station.
#
The Storm
The Sheriff called again. She had picked up a coffee, drove back to the motel, packed her bag quick and then, like hours before, found her eyes trained on her cell on the nightstand.
“Vie just left,” he said when she picked up.
“You let him go?”
“We couldn’t keep him. He lawyered up. We have nothing. If the body returns some DNA, we might get him that way.”
Chief Howard’s pause stretched out. She could tell he was driving, and she wondered if the connection had been lost.
“What? What is it?”
“Annie, look, I think you should leave town if you’re going.”
“You think he could come after me?”
“You are a threat to him. You know yourself about his rage.”
She did indeed.
“He might not trust what you know or might not know. I’m just saying that – “
She’d stopped listening. Headlights swept into the parking lot then, slipped past the large front window of her unit. She heard the crunch of tires on the gravel drive.
She moved quick to the window, slit the curtains and through the downpour watched red brake lights wink on a truck on the far side of the parking lot.
Then she only heard the engine die.
“You still there?” Howard asked, breaking into her quiet.
“A vehicle just pulled in,” she said.
Lightning again turned night into day.
Taggert said. “Lock yourself in the bathroom. I’m not far.”
“I don’t know if it’s Ross.”
“Better safe than sorry,” he said. “Go now. I’m on my way.”
She heard the click on the other end of the phone.
Seconds later, the driver’s door opened, and the cab lit; a tall figure stepped out, grey trench coat past his knees, hood pulled over his face.
He started to march her way.
She rushed to the washroom. And locked the door.
And climbed in the tub.
She would wait. Chief Howard would be here soon.
She heard rapping on the motel door and then pounding on the door and then –
The door crashed open.
He was in the room.
Nowhere to go.
She blinked suddenly.
Why was she just waiting to die?
Adrenalin fueled, she stood up on the toilet, and pushed out the window.
A tap on the bathroom door.
She started to wiggle out.
Two quick raps on the door.
As she started to pitch toward the ground and she put out her hands to brace her fall, she heard the bathroom door crash open.
And down she fell onto hard earth.
But she was alive.
She leapt to her feet.
“Run, Lise,” he growled from the bathroom window. His voice sounded deep and thunderous and seemed to echo in her head.
She heard a car in the distance. The Chief was on his way.
She flew toward the front of the building.
Quick, she sprinted into the parking lot and then to the road.
As she stood on the middle line, she saw bright headlights, through the rain and through a thin layer of fog that hugged the tarmac.
She caught Vie taking long strides her way.
Was there no one else at the motel? The owners? Surely, someone must have heard.
Vie shouted, “Run.”
The voice sounded in her head and she tried to shake it off. She needed to stay, wait for the Chief.
As he got closer, she stepped back further, fumbling her cell from her pocket.
Call the Chief, and tell him she needed to run –
Vie said, “Drop the phone.”
She felt her fingers unclench and the phone hit the hardtop. She could only stare at it.
Played with Ouija boards, into dark magic, the dark arts, she remembered Howard saying of Vie.
He was using some dark trick, she thought. Manipulating her mind.
She spun around and charged into the forest.
She blinked back tears at the sharp sting from each branch and from the horrific sounds of hurried breathing rushing behind her, the breaking of branches, and the snapping of twigs beneath heavy boots.
Panic urged her on.
Within seconds, she tripped and crashed to the earth; the wind knocked out of her, she smelled the aroma of rot and decay.
She’d fallen in Lise’s grave.
She turned herself over in time to see Vie standing there.
He reached out and grabbed her by the throat with one hand and lifted her up easily, slamming her against the tree.
“So, you saw the past,” he whispered. “Bet you didn’t see this future. I’m going to feel you die.”
She stared in that hood but saw nothing, only layers of shifting darkness.
She struggled wildly as he held her, fists pounding his arms to release her.
His thumb pressed against her carotid artery.
Her fingers dipped in his trench coat pocket.
Please let it be there! She prayed.
Her fingers touched a chain, and then the heart shaped locket.
Clutching it tight, she trembled as her strength ebbed.
Quick, she lifted a hand and jabbed it into his hood.
She felt the heart’s point gouge against a bony cheek.
He relaxed his grip.
She fell to the ground.
And looked up at him standing there in the rain. Blood, intense red, beaded on the darkness and he brushed it away with the back of his hand.
Like smoke in the wind, the darkness in the hood tattered and seemed to blow away.
Chief Howard gazed down at her.
She felt her heart kick.
“You!”
No one was coming for her!
“You broke the spell,” he said, voice now normal.
She tried to move, to run, but she could only stare.
“I remember killing her. It felt like love.”
“Why did you do it?”
She could try to run but she felt broken, and beside, even if she could flee, the Chief could no doubt move faster.
“I loved her. I never meant to harm her. She came out of the motel alone, maybe just for fresh air. I saw my chance. I came up to her and used a little influence to get her to the woods.”
Annie remembered dropping the phone at his direction. He’d told her to wait in the bathroom too and she’d done just that.
“I wanted to talk to her, that’s all, just talk, tell her how I felt about her – “
“You killed her!”
He scowled. “And killing her, I found my new love.”
Then, he flung himself on top of her.
She struggled, but it was no use. He was much too strong and heavy. He gripped her arms and shoved each hand under his knees.
“Lise and Vie, they dabbled in the dark arts,,” he said, hands tight around her throat. “I mastered it.”
And then, Howard’s body tensed.
His eyes flashed to the woods as though he’d heard something. She watched a frown crease his face.
It looked like he was about to call out, his dry lips parting ever so slightly -
His body was violently ripped off her.
She watched as he flew several feet in the air smashing hard against a nearby large oak.
Annie heard the snap of bones and cartilage.
The limp body dropped and lay still on the forest floor, face down.
Vie stood a few feet away, she saw then, clenched hands at his side.
“You mastered nothing,” he spat.
His gaze drifted to her. He offered his hand.
“How did you know I was here?” Annie asked as he pulled her up.
And how the hell did you throw Howard!?! She wanted to ask but didn’t.
“You’re intense.” Then, “I was coming to see where Lise was found. I thought maybe I could feel her again.”
She nodded.
She reached down and picked up the locket in some grass.
“She’d want you to have this.”
He snapped it open.
Annie saw the young couple who smiled out at them – Vie and Lise, arms around each other. She sensed, even from the picture, the love they shared.
“You brought her home,” he said, voice cracking. “Damn.”
They walked back to the motel as the rain fell to a drizzle.
#
Aftermath
They sat across from each other in the diner waiting for the police to question them further. Not that they’d believe the whole thing, but they had a dead officer whose entire body lay shattered from head to toe.
What could have done that? they’d wonder.
Annie couldn’t explain it and Vie certainly didn’t seem open to discussion.
Annie and Vie quietly sipped their coffee.
Finally, Annie said, “Why did you run when the police came to see you?”
“Fear. I felt it was all going to start again, the accusations, the whole town looking at me like I’m some psycho. I just wanted to run.”
She nodded. Understood.
“Howard was using some sort of dark magic to cloud his face,” she said. “He’d killed more people than Lise, I bet.”
Vie took a sip of coffee. “Dark magic can be addictive. Lise and I we tried the Ouija once and it was spooky shit. We never went back to it. We were just teenagers goofing off.”
“You threw Howard so far without touching him.” It wasn’t a question.
“Not sure I did that,” he said, staring into his mug. “Maybe you did that.”
“Or Lise?”
“Maybe.”
She smiled slightly. She got the impression her question might never be answered.
“Something bothers me,” she said, changing the subject. “Howard told me her folks sent Lise away.”
“That’s true.”
“Why then exactly? You were sweethearts for years. Why did her folks send her away then?”
“I was a bit of a bad ass. I grew up.”
That answer didn’t feel right. “No, something happened to make her parents send their daughter off. And why me? I keep asking myself that. Why did Lise reach out to me? There is something else I’m missing.”
Then it struck her, an idea so fully formed she could hardly believe she hadn’t somehow guessed it long before now.
Everything was connected.
“She was pregnant,” she said.
“What?”
“That’s why they sent her away, to have the baby, so no one would know, most of all you.”
“We didn’t keep secrets from each other.”
“She might have thought of it as protecting you.”
“Protecting me? From what?”
“From a life you weren’t ready for. Neither of you were. You were kids. She didn’t want to ruin your life or hers. I am sure her folks talked her into everything but ultimately she did what she had to.”
He shook his head. “That’s quite an assumption.”
“She made a decision.” Then, “Just like my folks did when they adopted me.”
Again, her folks came forefront to her mind and the dream of her mom and father in the hospital room.
When her mom turned to go in the dream, Annie saw she was very skinny. Her mother had not had a baby… she had just adopted one.
Vie’s eyebrows lifted.
“I think I’m your daughter.” Seeing the look on his face she said, “A DNA test will be able to determine that.”
He smiled. “We had a little girl.”
“Lise led me to her killer.”
“And you to me,” he said.
She smiled and reached over, grabbed his hand. She felt only peace within him as he squeezed. The anger from earlier, the murderous rage had been extinguished. Now, this man could truly live again.
“You have her eyes.” He smiled sadly. “Okay. First things first. I’m starving.”
“I knew you were going to say that” she said, her finger already lifted to get their server.
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