She waded through the sea of brand-new clothes, silks and lace grasping for her
ankles, trying to get her attention. They would embark on their trip to Edinburgh in the morning.
It was something they had been planning for years, at her own urging, as they hadn’t left the country
since their honeymoon ten years prior. Now that the time had finally arrived, all she wanted to do was
go back to sleep. With begrudged effort, she rifled through her pile of half-packed bags, eventually
locating her laptop, and pulled up the loose itinerary she had saved as another person, in another
lifetime as “Scotland!!!”.
She pulled up the pictures of The Royal Mile, hoping the beautiful countryside and
palatial buildings would wrestle her free of her lethargy. As she scrolled through castles and
hills, she caught movement in the corner of her eye . . . Amber, in all her glory. She whistled as
she plopped her two neatly-packed bags by the door. Her braids were pulled back from her face
with a purple LA Lakers headband. Her black tracksuit looked as if it had been customized for
her tall, athletic frame and was pristine, as her clothes always were. Nicole looked down at her
own faded concert tee and ill-fitting jean shorts and sighed.
“Babe, we should be ready to leave for the airport first thing in the morning. Can I help
you pack your stuff?” Amber asked, surveying the pile with poorly-veiled concern.
“I’ll get it done,” Nicole stated firmly, for both Amber and for herself, taking a small step
towards her goal through actualization. The last thing she wanted was to cause them both to run
late tomorrow. Amber was punctual and nothing annoyed her more than to be behind.
“Okay. Let me know if you do, Daffodil.” She kissed Nicole’s forehead and headed back
towards their bedroom, leaving a trace of Dior Sauvage in the air behind her. Amber’s beauty
was eclipsed only be her conscientiousness. She was meticulous and thorough in all things, so
unlike Nicole. But opposites not only attract but balance, and that they did.
Nicole resumed trying to wrangle her recklessly acquired new vacation outfits into neatly
folded piles but like her they were rumpled and unsteady. She had hoped that new clothes would
get her excited to take pictures, to feel fancy and confident, as Amber naturally was in a gown or
even sweats. But the tag-adorned fabrics looked cheap and garish to her now and would only
magnify rather than conceal her physical shortcomings.
She’d love to set the entire pile, suitcases and all, on fire.
She pushed the intrusive thought as deep into the dark recesses of her mind as she could,
but her stomach knotted more and more as she contemplated the days ahead. A sudden,
overwhelming iciness shook her body..
tap tap
Nicole’s heart was already racing but now it thundered.
tap tap
Where was the sound coming from? It seemed like a knocking, but it wasn’t coming from
the front door.
“Amber . . .” Nicole began moving to the bedroom, unwilling to investigate the sound
alone, when a terrifying gaze met hers through the kitchen window. Two frantic,
bloodshot eyes framed by soaked brown hair stared back at her. They belonged to a woman
who couldn’t have been much older than twenty, her skin so pale the veins of her face glowed
blue and purple beneath it. Her mouth was contorted into a grotesque shriek, as if she had witnessed
something horrific and her face had remained forever fixed in that awful moment. She tapped again
on the window.
tap tap
Nicole noticed the woman’s nails were jagged and stained with dirt? With dried blood?
“Are you in danger?” she asked the gaunt and ghostly figure, but all she received in
response was more frenzied rapping.
tap tap
tap tap
“You called?” Amber appeared at her side.
“What should I do? Call the police? This poor woman . . .”
“What woman?” Amber asked. Nicole returned her focus to the kitchen window which
now revealed only a birdfeeder and windchimes, superimposed with the couple’s reflection.
“There was a woman there! She seemed like she was in trouble . . . Didn’t you hear her
tapping on the window?” Nicole questioned.
Amber surveyed the spotless glass pane.
“No . . .I didn’t hear anything. Are you sure it wasn’t just Maureen? You know she gets a bit
confused after a few drinks.”
Nicole knew definitively that it hadn’t been Maureen, their next-door neighbor, whose
panic-stricken face she had just stared into, but she couldn’t explain the woman’s sudden
disappearance or lack of handprints on the glass and suddenly felt extremely nauseated and
weak.
“Yeah, you’re probably right. Sorry. . .”
An hour passed. Nicole tried her best to push the strange woman’s frantic visage from her
mind as she unceremoniously stuffed underwear, blow-dryer, and stupid new clothes into her
rolling suitcase. She couldn’t imagine getting up the next morning and getting on a plane, a
thought she avoided when at all possible, particularly given how sick she currently felt. She saw
the mystery woman’s grotesquely contorted face in her suitcase, in the mirror, and when she shut
her eyes.
tap tap
Nicole ran to the guest bathroom and vomited.
tap tap
The tapping followed her to the small, translucent bathroom window. Sobs shook
Nicole’s body as she pulled herself prostrate, terrified but determined to help the young woman.
As she made her way to the back door, the nearest exit to the bathroom window, she felt as if she
were watching tape playing out in the life of someone else. A stranger’s feet moved to the back
door, a stranger’s hand turned the lock counter-clockwise. The night air was warm and heavy.
The occasional trill of insects broke the silence. Nicole saw only the modest grass lot framed in
perfectly maintained dark plum loropetalum shrubs that ran the perimeter of their two-bedroom
house. They had lived here since college, before they were a couple, and when the landlord
decided to sell, Nicole had begged Amber, now her wife, to buy it, though Amber had always
envisioned a stately multi-storied property filled with rooms to entertain friends and house
family. But for Nicole, a small house meant a place that was all their own. And its confines had
always felt warm and safe, not restricting. Until now.
“Miss . . .” Nicole called out weakly. There was no one to be seen. She didn’t even hear
any cars on the road. She felt she might be physically ill again and made to return inside when a
tattered, once-white dress crossed her peripheral vision. The woman appeared to have been in a
horrible accident. Her dress had been ripped unappealingly from her gaunt frame and hung in
filthy ribbons. Her face remained frozen in the painful shriek Nicole had glimpsed earlier, though
no scream emitted from her cracked and bloodied lips.
“What happened to you? Do you need help?”
The grim specter seemed to pause to consider before nodding slowly, deliberately.
“Okay. Should I call the police? Your family?”
Again a pause before the figure slowly shook her head.
“I’m sorry, miss. I don’t know how to help. Are you injured? Did someone hurt y—?”
Before she could finish her question, the strange woman grabbed Nicole’s hands in her frigid
ones, tucking something within them before running off.
“Wait!” Nicole called after her but the woman disappeared into the bushes. Nicole unclasped
her shaking hands to find a crumpled piece of parchment that looked as if it had been buried
and only recently unearthed. As she opened it, brushing dirt off, the moonlight
afforded her just enough illumination to make out three desperately scrawled words: Don’t go
tomorrow.
Amber was sound asleep when Nicole came into the bedroom. Her wife would never
forgive her for ruining their dream vacation. And over what? Something that she couldn’t quite
explain in words. The strange woman had brought with her a foreboding that now hung from
every wall and surface of their home. But she seemed believable, hadn’t she, warning Nicole of
imminent danger? Perhaps that would explain why Nicole had been so slow and unenthusiastic in
getting ready for her trip even before her startling appearance. She may have been unknowingly
packing for her demise.
She quickly opened the door to the connecting master bathroom and
heaved for several minutes, though little remained to expel from her stomach.
“You okay, babe?,” Amber whispered, her words thick with sleep.
“Yeah, I think I just ate something crazy earlier. I’ll be fine. Sorry for waking you.”
Nicole tried her best to steady her voice.
“You’re all good, Daffodil. I’m sorry you’re not feeling well.” Well was drawn out with a
yawn.
What could she do? There was nothing legitimate she could share with authorities, no
way to explain to Amber why she was destroying all they had worked so hard to plan and pay
for. Nicole’s vision blurred as she tried to make her way quietly back out to the living room.
She’d only end up tossing and turning all night and Amber at least deserved a full night’s rest
before being completely destroyed by Nicole’s refusal to go on the trip in the morning. She
prayed their relationship could withstand this. A sob escaped her. Amber was her absolute dream
come true. She was excitement and fun but she was also peace and home. Nicole convulsed with
self-loathing.
tap tap
Nicole started at the sound, wondering if her heart might simply give out before
the night was over.
tap tap
She dragged herself to the front door where the noise was coming from. The
woman was doing her best to hide behind a pillar when Nicole opened the door, but had a
bruised and scratched arm extended toward Nicole.
“I don’t want to hurt you. I’m trying to help you. What did you mean by ‘Don’t go
tomorrow’? I don’t understand . . .”
The woman shoved what felt like a rag into Nicole’s hand before retreating into the night.
The motion sensor light, only now deciding to work, glared over the messily scrawled message
on horribly stained white fabric: or kill me.
Nicole hesitantly ventured out into the driveway, looking up and down the street for the clearly
deranged woman, to no avail. She wanted to scream, to run away, but instead she sank to the
porch and cried. She cried for Amber’s dazzling smile, for the castles in Scotland she wished she
was excited to see, for the beautiful years filled with adventures with Amber that she may now
never know. She felt so terribly unhinged, so unwell, both physically and mentally. Amber
deserved so much better.
And then there she was. The grotesque woman had returned clutching a hammer that
seemed to overpower her fragile frame. Tears streamed from her eyes as she extended the tool to
Nicole.
Nicole considered the rusted hammer for a moment before closing her eyes,
letting the crude totem lead her out to the dark waters of memory.
When she opened her eyes, the woman remained trembling, weapon proffered up. Nicole
took a deep breath of the humid night air in through her nose and exhaled slowly through her
mouth. She looked down at the droplets of water collecting on the red hibiscus flowers at the foot
of the porch. She squatted down and pressed her hands to the damp and grainy surface of her
concrete entryway. When she stood back up, she took the hammer from her wild-eyed visitor. It
felt heavier than ten of its kind. Nicole used both hands to lift it in an arc over her head, before
bringing it down with a deafening impact against a terra cotta pot and its floral inhabitants. She
stepped over the shards of brown ceramic and grabbed the woman by both cold, spindly arms,
enveloping her in as tight of an embrace as she could manage.
As she squeezed, Nicole’s heartbeat slowed and her nausea receded. The chills left her body, as did
the dread of the next day and every day after that. She opened her eyes to thank the apparition for
all she had done but her eyes met only with the bejeweled night sky, her arms grasping her own shoulders.
She ran back inside. She needed to finish packing for Scotland.
