A little mystery
A little mystery
Ruthie’s POV
I was comforted by the lake slapping up against the rocks. Now, the sound makes me nervous. Instead of a soft hush, it’s a hiss, like a secret being spoken and then taken by the wind. It’s a drone, a waiting noise.
It’s late afternoon, and the wind is cold enough to sneak under my sweater. Through the living room window, I can see the trail coming up to the house. The pines press close in on the gravel path, their branches-so dark, so black they’re not green. They’re too near the house. The trail is abandoned.
Quiet. Obedient Yet still I can’t shake the feeling that someone else is there—right outside the trees, watching.
I tell myself I’m being paranoid. That it’s this: the solitude is getting to me. Eliot wanted peace, he said. He wanted to go us somewhere new, escape the chaos, get away from New York, more quiet. “A new start,” he called it. He sold it to me as an escape, the answer to the best way to weather the storm: go home.
But a sanctuary can just as equally be a cage… A place in her new book, The Risen, N.K. Jemison talks about---including a city from Farseer. The city was too loud, too crowded, but there were people, there were witnesses; they were not alone. The only difference is that here the silence is doggedly, stubbornly absolute.
“Ruthie?” Eliot’s voice calls again from the kitchen. “You okay?”
I turn around with a hand pressed to my chest. “Yeah,” I said lying. “Just… zoning out.”
He leans against the doorframe.
“You’ve been a little jumpy lately.”
“Have I?”
He strolls over to me gradually, grinning like he’s anticipates sharing some secret or joke with me. “Mm-hmm. You gaze out that window every night like the sky’s the only thing worth looking at.” What are you waiting for?”
I forcibly laugh. “For you to teach me to cook without setting the house on fire.”
He chuckles, and for a fleeting moment he is the Eliot I loved. Warm. Charming. Real. But the softness, as abruptly as it arrived, vanishes.
His gaze lingers too long. His smile remains, but not his eyes. It’s like a mask he picked up at a novelty store — realistic from a distance, less so when you get a closer look, the dead plastic beneath staring right back at you.
“Come eat,” he says at last. “Dinner’s getting cold”
Sleep felt like a mirage that night.
I look up at the ceiling as I listen to the slight creaking of the wooden floors. There’s movement — soft, subtle. It’s not the house settling; I know the sounds of this house. This is a tread. Half a beat, a shifting of weight, and then a second measured step on the worn floorboards just beyond our door. “Like someone’s walking in the hallway.”
I bend my head a little. “Eliot?” I whisper.
No answer.
I hold my breath. I have goosebumps. I count to ten, ortaking slow breaths as I wait for him to awaken, for the sound to end, for something to let me know I’m dreaming. But he’s dead to the world, and the sound is painfully real.
There it is again—footsteps.
Slow. Careful.
Then silence.
I swallow hard, ease out from under his arm, and go for the lamp. Stop the second the light is turned on and the sound stops.
The hall is vacant.
Still, my heart is pounding as I sneak into the living room. The air is denser here, and the silence is too loud. I draw open the curtains—nothing but darkness and the faint glint of the lake out there.
And yet…
I swear I see movement. A flash. A figure.
“Eliot?”
His voice startles me. He’s at the end of the hallway, shirtless and half asleep, eyes squinted.
“What are you doing?”
“I heard something,” I whisper.
He looks once at the window, then at me again. To Ruthie, “There's nothing there. You’re scaring yourself again.”
“I know what I heard.”
He sighs, comes toward me and takes me in his arms. “It’s the wind. This place creaks. You’re safe, okay? I promise.”
His tone is soft but final, like he’s closing a door I’m not allowed to open. He presses me back to the bed without quite saying, ‘please, go back to the bed,’ as though mere pressure on my shoulders carries the weight of that unspoken request. He’s pacifying me. He’s managing me. “I’m just tired, I guess,” I mumble.
He kisses my forehead. “Come back to bed.”
I let him lead me pull me, though my heart has no intention of slowing its pace.
The following day, I’m off driving to work by myself. Eliot insisted he’d meet me later for lunch, said he had “calls to make.”
At the wellness clinic, something isn’t right. I’m a therapist. I get paid to listen, to be the calm center. But today, the stark pastels of the lobby are sick-making. My colleagues laugh and chat but I can’t concentrate. My colleague, Jenna, is laughing by the Keurig machine as she discusses her child’s soccer game; the noise is dissonant, as if it’s coming from another planet.
How can she seem so normal when the world seems so tilted?
When I go outside to get coffee, I see a car parked on the other side of the street — a dark sedan I don’t recognize. A plain black sedan, the sort that disappears everywhere.
It’s in front of the clinic. Engine running. It hasn’t moved in the ten minutes I’ve been standing here. It’s perfectly angled our way so you can see it.
I squint, trying to make out the driver, but the windows are tinted. Sunlight glints off the windshield, hiding everything in there. It seems intentional. Predatory.
For a second, it seems like somebody’s watching me. I take a step back, clutching my bag more tightly. Then the car drives off slowly, turning the corner.
Coincidence. Probably.
But then I look down at my phone and there is a new text. Not a contact name. Just a number.
. My blood runs cold. The words are stony. No preamble, no signature. It’s not a question. It’s a statement. A warning. My first impulse isn’t disbelief; it is a nauseating, stomach-dropping confirmation of some terror I’ve never even brought out of the shadows.
I look around the parking lot - no one’s there. Just the faint hum of traffic.
I delete the text at once, my hands trembling.
All day long I try to shrug it off, but in my head the words roll like a drumbeat. He isn’t who you think he is.
That night, Eliot is already home when I get there. Dinner’s set, candles lit. Romantic, almost too much so. He’s hoed pasta, the rich smell of garlic and basil permeating the kitchen. It’s my favorite. But the endeavour seems choreographed, as the candlelight throws shadows up and down the walls that seem to flutter nervously. It’s a performance.
“You look tense,” he says, as he pulls out my chair.
“Just tired,” I murmur.
He looks me over. His gaze is analytical, not concerned. Like he’s analyzing a problem, a variable in an equation he has to work out. "You've been tired a lot lately."
I smile weakly. "Maybe you are the one who is getting tired because of me."
He chuckles and it sounds strained. "You've insomnia?"
I shake my head. “It’s just the new place, I guess. Still getting used to it.”
He reaches across the table, takes my hand. His skin is warm, but my hand is ice.
“You’re safe here, Ruthie. I’d never allow any harm to come to you.
That has me shivering not with comfort but the weight of it, by something about how he says it. The words ought to be comforting, but they hit like a danger. Safe and behind bars. Safe. Locked in. Safe,” he says as if reading my mind.
I nod anyway. “I know.”
But when the phone buzzes on the counter, he doesn't reach for it. The screen now is on. A name comes up for a split second—Unknown.
Then it’s dark again.
He is still eating, impervious. He didn’t even twitch. He stared straight into my eyes. That’s what really makes me nervous. A good enough facsimile would at least have inspected it. His stillness is a trained, intentional detachment.
I'm staring at the phone, my heart racing.
As he showers later, the sound of the water slapping against the tile provides me with just enough of a distraction. I can’t stop myself. I grab the phone.
Locked. Of course.
One thing grabs my attention — what looks like a faint crack underneath the charging port. Inside, a piece of paper is wedged between the phone and the case, made out of hard plastic. Folded tiny. I pull it out cautiously, dragging my fingernail against the edge.
It’s a list.
Handwritten.
Six names.
All crossed out in thick, angry black ink.
Except one.
Ruthie August.
My heart is pounding against my ribs so hard I nearly drop the piece of paper. Bile rises in my throat.
I read the names again through my lips. Strangers. All of them. Everything but me. My breath come out in short bursts, this can mean anything though.
Maybe a dream journal, a prank, a note from work. Anything but what it is.
I hear the shower stop. Suddenly, they’re so quiet I can hardly hear.
I shove the paper back, swiftly, my sweaty palms are so slick that I almost drop the phone. I put it back on the counter, screen down, and back away, pretending to adjust my hair in the mirror.
When Eliot comes out, towel around his waist, he grins at me like nothing’s wrong.
“What are you doing?” he mockingly asks.
“It’s nothing,” I say too fast.
He grins, approaches, kisses the side of my neck. “You’re shaking.”
“Am I?”
He hums, lips brushing my skin. “You are.” His grip is proprietary, his arms a cage. I’m caught in his arms, my body stiff, my mind yelling.
I manage a soft laugh. “Maybe I’m cold.”
He embraces me, brings me close. “Then I’ll just warm you up.”
I force a smile. “You always do. ”
But when I shut my eyes, all I can see is the paper. The list.
And m
y name, not crossed out.
He moans against my hair, and “Always” sounds like a vow and a sentence, all at once.