I have a feeling he read my thoughts because a smirk spread across his pale lips. Rather than fulfilling my wish, he set me upon my bed and stepped back. I still rasped for air and turned my head to give him a quizzical look. My heated body demanded we continue to the climax of this sensual interaction, but he merely bowed to me. "I must leave you for a time, but I shall return."
As pathetic as this sounds, I whimpered. I would have given everything I owned to get him to stay. He saw my need and actually looked regretful because he stepped over and grasped one of my hands. "I promise I will come to you, but for now my time here is short. I am obliged to return to my resting place and replenish my strength."
He stepped back and released my hand. His eyes smiled at me even as I noticed that the rest of him was slowly fading away. He was reverting back to the dark fog. I sat up and watched the transformation with fascination and, regretfully, a growing sense of fear. This reminded me how unnatural this whole situation was, and I slowly slid back until I hit the wall. He saw my reaction to his change, and his eyes reflected a sorrow so deep that through his eyes I could feel my own rejection of him. The man lifted his head and closed his eyes. The rest of his body was consumed by the fog, and a cloud hung over the spot where he had stood.
Without warning the cloud sped toward me. I opened my mouth to let out a yelp of fright, and the fog slipped inside. The thick air slid down my throat and once again dispersed inside of my body. I slapped my hand over my mouth and my eyes bulged. There wasn't anything physically different about the feel of that thing back inside of me, but I still had a sensation of hurling; anything to dispel that thing out of me. The urge to hurl got so bad that I jumped off the bed and raced over to my wastebasket. I clung to the sides and hung my head over the mouth, waiting for some horrible bile to rise up out of my throat.
After a few minutes my stomach and thoughts calmed down, and I figured nothing was going to come up. I leaned back and put my hands behind me with the palms on the floor. My mind rewound and replayed the meeting with that fog man countless times, and every single time I beat myself up for my weakness. I shouldn't have welcomed his advances so eagerly, and the worst part about this was I knew at our next meeting things wouldn't go any differently. That was also a bad thought, because I just knew there was going to be a next meeting. His repeated promises and my own, deep seated need to see him would make that happen. I was a slave to his advances, a willing partner to his sexual urges.
I groaned and rolled over to face the window. Maybe some fresh air would help me clear my head of these heated thoughts. My eyes fell on the clock, which read three o'clock as the time. Too damn early to be up on any day, especially a Saturday. I crawled toward the window and was prepared for another struggle. It slid up at my first weak yank. Damn traitorous thing, only worked when my life and sanity weren't in any danger.
I stuck my head out and inhaled a nice, fresh autumn breeze. It smelled of damp leaves and heavy dew. By this time a lot of the parties were coming to a close so there was a quiet over the campus. I glanced over the row of trees in front of my dorm and out upon the night sky. The stars twinkled above this small college town, and far off I could see the fields of the farms that surrounded these buildings of learning and booze. Somewhere out there among the many thickets of trees was the graveyard, and beyond that old gate stood that mausoleum.
I couldn't quite grasp what this stranger was. He felt and looked real, but he wasn't. No real person would stalk someone to their room by turning into fog and entering their body. Well, except in horror stories, but this was my life. Except for the occasional obnoxious boyfriend, it wasn't that unusual. Remembering that trouble, I groaned and let my head fall forward onto the window sill. It hit with a soft knocking sound, but I didn't care. I had to face it, my normal life was now not so normal.
Even with all this weirdness and my forehead hurting from hitting the sill, I managed a laugh. "This is what I get for going to a drinking party with a boy I've only known for two months."
I rolled over so my back was against the wall and smiled up at the ceiling. Maybe things would turn out for the better. After all, when Rob got back maybe I could get my knife back, too. My thoughts whispered away to other meaningless things until it was overtaken by sleep.
I knew nothing until later in the morning when an annoying noise woke me up. It was my phone. My bleary eyes opened and I scowled at the thing on my nightstand. I crawled over to it and was, unfortunately, in time to reach the caller. "Hello?" I garbled out.
"Jess, that you?" came a familiar voice. It was Ashley, curse her soul.
"Ashley? What the hell are you doing calling me-" I glanced at the clock. Seven in the morning. "-at this god-awful early hour?"
"I was just kind of worried if you'd got back safe. That road isn't very easy to drive in the dark. So how'd things go with Rob? You have to drag him to his apartment?"
I rubbed the sleep from my eyes and sighed. "I wish that would've been the worst of it." I recounted the horrendous confrontation with him along the road and included everything except the encounter with the creepy guy. In the light of day any ghost story sounded fantastic, and I wondered if I hadn't dreamed the whole thing up. "And that's what happened. Not sure what happened to Rob, but he could've wandered back to his-"
"Call him." Ashley's voice sounded strained, almost panicked. That got my heart beating faster, and I was definitely awake now.
"Call him? What's the point? Even if he's back he's probably too hung over to answer the phone," I told her.
I shuddered at my friend's pleading, scared tone. "Please, please try to call him, and if he doesn't answer you can always go over to his place."
"Fine, fine. I'll give him a ring and see if he answers. If he doesn't, well, I'll try again later today and see if he's at his place, okay?" I suggested. Anything to placate her fear.
It worked. She sounded relieved, but there was still that underlying strain. "That would definitely be great. I'm sorry to be such a bother, but it's just, well, you remember that story I told you about the strange man. I just feel that with Rob boasting last night about seeing the cemetery that maybe something bad happened to him."
"What? Like he tripped over a headstone and got impaled?" I tried to joke. It fell flatter than a pancake from the dining hall.
"You know that's not what I mean. I mean that maybe Rob met him. The ghost."
Twenty-four hours ago I would have rolled my eyes and told her to act sensible. Now I wasn't even sure about my own senses, not with what happened last night and that morning. Instead I slumped down onto my bed and sighed. "I'm sure he's fine. He's probably back at his apartment and drooling on the couch."
Ashley laughed, but it sounded forced. "You're probably right. Well, I got to go help my parents do some decorating for their own Halloween party at the Grange. Call me when you hear something, okay?"
"Will do."
Her line went dead and I was left feeling worse than when I'd woken up. I looked down at the phone and frowned. I wished I could believe what I just told her about Rob being on the couch just then, but there was a bad feeling in my gut. There was only one way to dispel it, so I rang up his number and put the phone to my ear.
The phone rang. And rang. And rang. Six times, and then his answering machine picked it up. I left a short message after the beep.
"Hey Rob, it's Jess. I was just checking to see how you were doing. Give me a call when you wake up, okay? Bye."
I hung up the phone and glanced out the window. The sun was shining outside, but I felt a chill run down my spine. Between Ashley's fear and Rob not answering his phone, I had a double-whammy of worry. Add the graveyard man and what I was hoping was just a weird dream earlier that morning, and I was up to my eyeballs in strange-ville. I was also so focused on my thoughts that when the phone in my hand rang, I jumped. I glanced at the number. It wasn't familiar, but I answered it anyway.
"Hello?" At least I didn't sound as tired as I did when Ashley cal
led earlier.
"Jessica? It's Brent." My shoulders slumped. This day was just getting worse. "Have you tried to get a hold of Rob?"
"Yeah, but he didn't answer his phone. Ashley called me, too, and was wondering how we made out last night, so she hasn't seen him, either," I told him.
"I still have his car outside my home. Think I should go to his apartment and check it out?" he asked me.
A realization struck me when I recalled the car keys. "Oh crap! He can't get in without those keys because his apartment key is on that chain." That meant he could have been slumped over at his front door in a dead stupor.
"Maybe the cool morning air will sober him up enough not to kill me," Brent joked.
"I don't think that's very funny," I replied. That's exactly what Rob had tried to do to me last night.
I could imagine Brent cringing. "Sorry, bad joke."
"Very bad," I emphasized.
"Yeah, well, I'd better get over there and see if Rob made it back. Otherwise we'll have to go to the police, or do a search or something."
I liked even less than the joke the thought of somebody trying to deal with Rob alone after a night of bingeing. I'd only seen him hung over once or twice, and sometimes he wasn't pretty. "Did you need any help? With going over to the house, I mean. His neighbors might wonder what a stranger's doing with his car."
Brent sounded both relieved and worried. "What about what he tried to do to you last night? You sure you want to be doing that?" he asked me.
"Hopefully he lost the knife-" Something I both hoped and didn't hope for. "-so he'll be a lot safer to deal with."
"All right. How about I pick you up at the same spot I dropped you off and we'll go over there right now?"
I looked down at my ruffled appearance and sighed. "Fine. May as well get it over with."
"Cool, be there in a bit."
He clicked off and my hand holding the phone dropped to the floor. I leaned my head back against the bed and groaned. Things were just getting more complicated, and I felt absolutely trashed and filthy. I could do something about the trash and filthiness, but the complications were another story. Knowing he was going to be hurrying over here, I pulled back my hair, changed my clothes and scampered my tired body out of the dorm. Sure enough Brent sat outside with the car running and his lips creased together. I slid into the passenger seat and waited for him to pull away.
He turned to me with a sheepish grin. "Um, where is Rob's apartment, anyway?"
I looked at him for a moment, then opened my door and stepped out. I leaned inside and nodded at his own door. "Get out. I'm driving."
"Heh, no arguments here." He abandoned the driver's seat for mine, and vice versa.
I drove us down to Rob's apartment complex. It was off one of the back roads in a very dirty part of the town. Another indication I should have seen that he wasn't all that good of a boy. His apartment building was one of those two-story ones with a different renter for each floor. His was on the bottom and I was disappointed to see he wasn't slumped against the door. I parked the car in his parking spot and got out. Brent turned around and looked over the area. His eyes caught on the bushes that grew around the apartment buildings, and he pointed at them. "Think he might be in there?"
"I don't know, look," I snapped back. I rubbed more tiredness and stress out of my eyes than I cared to admit and walked up to the door. I opened the apartment and glanced inside. The place was a mess. Food wrappers were everything, the trash was tipped over and it looked like it'd been dusted with the vacuum on reverse suck.
Brent followed me and looked over my shoulder. His mouth fell open. "Jesus. Somebody come here and trash the place?"
"Nope, it always looks like this." I stepped inside and glanced into the bedroom. Nobody there. The couch was empty, too. "Damn..." I muttered beneath my breath.
Brent stepped up behind me. "So what now? We go out looking for him or call the police?"
I tilted my head back and glanced over my shoulder. "You really want to get the police involved? That'd mean we'd have to tell them about last night, and they'd drag Rob to court for attempted murder."
"But isn't that what he tried to do? Shouldn't we stop him from doing it again?" Brent pointed out.
I sighed and shrugged. "Maybe, but I don't feel like being on the witness stand. Let's just look around the cemetery and see if he's hung over some tombstone or something."
I wasn't so sure about going anywhere near that mausoleum, but I was sure as hell I didn't want to be involved with the police. Right now that was more trouble than it was worth, so we set off for the woods. My only consolation was it was daylight and Brent was with me this time instead of a homicidal Rob. I only hoped we wouldn't find my ex-boyfriend in the same state as we left him the night before.
The road wasn't nearly as spooky, but as I parked the car in front of the cemetery gates I felt a chill run down my spine. A breeze swept through the trees and rattled their branches toward us as though beckoning us to enter, to come in and never leave. Well, I wasn't about to obey that plea so I did what any sensible person would do: I had Brent step out of the car first and see if he got taken by the forest.
No such luck, good or bad as it was. He looked around at the skeletal trees and ducked down back into the car. "No sign of Rob, but he's probably asleep somewhere among those graves."
"Did you really have to remind me that was a cemetery?" I grumbled.
I stepped out and gazed up at the dark metal archway. I didn't have a good view of it last night, and I'm glad I didn't. The whole thing was covered in real and metal vines, and wrapped between the branches were horrible scenes of night terror. Wolves with their fangs bared chased after miniature men while owls swooped down with their claws splayed out to catch more than one girl. Clouds and moons hung over the scenes, casting a darkness as deep as that which inhabited the cemetery beyond the twisted figures.
Even with the sun above us the tombs were covered beneath a mask of shade from the thick, ancient trees that grew up around the graves. The tree roots delved deep into the earth, and I shuddered when I imagined the knotty roots burrowing their way into the rotten coffins. I wrapped my arms around myself but it did little to ease either my body or my mind.
"You okay?" Brent asked me. He was looking me over with a very worried expression.
"What? Oh, no, I'm fine. Just kind of cold. Let's just get this over with." I stomped up the disused road and climbed over the fence with Brent at my back.
Our feet plopped down into a thick carpet of leaves. We'd walked a few steps forward when a breeze came up and wrapped the wet leaves around my legs. I looked back and saw our footsteps disappear beneath a new covering of the rotten vegetation.
"Damn. I was hoping we could have used the leaves to find Rob's trail, but these damn leaves aren't going to help," Brent muttered by my side.
"So what do we do now?" I whispered to him. Both of us were afraid to talk any louder. It felt like the very trees and gravestones were silently listening.
Brent shrugged. "I guess we'll have to retrace our steps as well as we can. I remember you went to the left and Rob lost you somewhere around that clump of trees." He nodded toward the group.
"And when did you lose Rob?" I asked him.
"Over the top of the hill. He was stumbling a few yards in front of me and the next thing I knew he was gone. That's when I came back for you and found you at that mausoleum."
"Well, we don't need to go over there if you lost Rob on the other side. How about we just head to the top and see what we can find?" I suggested. Anything to avoid that mausoleum and that guy.
"Sounds good."
The whole cemetery was built on a gently-sloped hill that was completely surrounded by woods. We hiked up the old road and in a few minutes reached the top. The cemetery was a cleared spot in the trees, and from the top of the hill we could see every part of the graveyard. That is, when trees, overgrown shrubs, oversized headstones and mausoleums weren't blocking o
ur view. As we stood there on the tip of the dead world, I noticed the place was eerily quiet. There weren't any sounds of a chirping bird or the rustling of leaves beneath a squirrel's paws. There was only us as we turned around in circles and crunched the dead leaves beneath our feet.
"I don't see him," Brent finally spoke up in a hushed voice.
"Yeah," I whispered back.
My eyes roamed the hillside and only saw shadows. The trees rattled in the soft, cold breeze that came up the hill. I glanced down in that direction and my gaze fell on a large, solid structure; the mausoleum. The cold breeze was coming from that crypt. The memory of the previous night flashed through my mind. The feel of his soft, cold hands on my arms and his sweet, echoing voice in my ears. Those strange, confusing words, and that magical, albeit brief, kiss.
"Hey! Where ya going?" Brent called out to me.
I skidded to a halt and slipped on the wet leaves. My balance was thrown off and I fell onto my butt. The jolt cleared a fuzzy haze from my mind and eyes. That's when I realized I was halfway down the hill. The mausoleum lay straight ahead of me, towering out of the ground like a tree formed by man's hands into his final resting place. I scrambled back on my hands and butt while at the same time Brent jogged down to me. He helped me up and I clung to him like a drowning man.
"I-I think I want to go," I pleaded with him.
"No kidding. You're as cold as ice," he replied. He gave another glance around and his lips were pursed tightly together. "I don't think we're going to be finding him anytime soon, anyway. This place is a lot bigger than it looked last night, but I suppose that's probably how we lost each other."
"Yeah, probably." I wasn't convinced, but there wasn't any solid proof of my doubt. Only a feeling that something wasn't quite right, like it was a little off.
"Maybe we should call the police and tell them he's missing. They'd do a better job of finding him in this place."
"No!" My loud, sudden objection scared us both. For Brent, it made him jump. "How about we just wait a day or two? Maybe he's pulling a Halloween prank on us or something like that," I suggested.
Brent frowned and shook his head. "I don't know. I don't think Rob's smart enough to pull off a trick complicated enough to get away with it for more than an hour. Besides, you really think he'd give up his car to me for any good reason?"